Customer Reviews

Last Warner Woman

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Being in bed with a bad cold, I read this through ... then I read it through a second time the next day and enjoyed my second reading as much as my first. Many things about this novel appeal to me: its view of an aspect of Jamaican life and the life of Jamaicans who emigrated Britain; its device of two different narrators telling the same story and that of the story within a story; the use of parable; its use of Jamaican speech (but not so much that the reader struggles to understand it); the notion that truth and fact are not the same and that truth can be more than fact or exist independent of fact. It is the literary equivalent of an object or painting that one can see from different points of view, each different view yielding different insights. It also touched another memory. I used regularly to see a woman, probably Jamaican, passing by our house or in the centre of our town in the East Midlands, who I now realise was probably just such a Warner Woman. I never knew her well, but always felt a warmth towards her, standing on the street corner outside our house dressed in elaborate red-and-white with a red cap of her own design, with a staff and bell, shouting her biblical warnings to whomever would hear. I now feel I understand her a little better than I did then.

Loved this novel about storytelling. Because this was a story about variations of a story,there were frequent flashbacks. One story is being told by the mysterious Mr. Writer Man and a variation of the story is being told by the main character,Pauline Portious, as she whispers it to the universe. Somewhere between the two or more variations we get to the truth. Some aspects of the story reminded me of the magical realism genre of Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I liked the elements of realism: the long lines at the Registrar's office, for example, and the employees chit chatting about the long running Jamaican soap opera. I have been in that line. I used to listen to the local soap, Royal Palm Estates, probably more than 10 years ago. There really was a home for lepers in St. Catherine. Catholic nuns were stationed to serve there. One nun,Sister Mary Augustine, wrote a book,"Two Hearts, One Fire", about her experiences. There really used to be Warner Women and Men preaching and prophesying gloom and doom. I enjoyed the flow of the language, the quirky characters. I liked the ironic situations and I liked how the story took us in a full circle. The Original Pearline Portious gave birth in a home where lepers were isolated and the second Pearline Portious gave birth where the mentally disturbed were isolated. Some readers will find the story repetitive but I enjoyed the repetition and the twists and turns of the story as it developed.