Salt [Hardcover]

Earl Lovelace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

Set in Trinidad, the story is launched by the mythical tale of Guinea John, an ancestor of Blackpeople, who put two corn cobs under his arm pits and flew from a clifftop, away from the scene of his enslavement, back to Africa. His descendants have eaten salt, grown too heavy to fly, and cannot follow him. They are left to wrestle with their future on the island. Now, more than one hundred years after "Emancipation, " like all the people who share the island - Asians, Africans, and Europeans - they need to be weaned from old captivities and welcomed into the New World. Addressing the challenge of this liberating welcome are Alford George, schoolteacher turned politician; Bango Durity, laborer and activist; and a swirl of unforgettable men and women - minor characters of major proportions - telling their stories in their own voices; all striving with passion and wit to make sense of their lives in the still-young country where the roles of enslaved and landowner still linger, but "the sky, the sea, every green leaf and tangle of vines sing freedom."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What a terrific book this is! It begins with an opening of mythic import where Guineau John, ancestor of black people, tucks two corncobs under his arms and flies home to Africa. His descendants, too heavy to fly because they have eaten salt, remain on the island of Trinidad, the novel's setting. The book is peopled with memorable characters, such as Alford George, an awkward, ungainly boy who does not speak till he is 6, spends his days reading, and grows up to be a schoolteacher and then politician. One of Lovelace's central concerns, expressed early in the first chapter, is how to deal with freedom after centuries of oppression. But this is no humorless polemic; it is a living, breathing novel, peopled with recognizable characters wrestling with all-too-human dilemmas.

From Booklist

Salt, Trinidadian writer Lovelace's first novel since the poetic The Wine of Astonishment (1982), is uptempo, lushly melodic, and all-absorbing by virtue of its affectionately rendered characters and piquant, parodic humor. Lovelace's story begins with the story of Guinea John, who escapes Trinidad in the aftermath of a failed insurrection by flying home to Africa. In a dream, he tells his daughter that because she and others in their family ate salt they're too heavy to fly, so they must stay put and try to straighten things out on their beautiful but oppressive island. This tale turns out to be prescient for Alford George, a misfit who finally achieves self-respect through a strict regime of self-improvement and a surefire plan to leave Trinidad. But, like the salt-eaters, he is unable to escape. Instead, he channels his immense energy and discipline into teaching and becomes an unlikely but very popular public figure. Lovelace is an astute political satirist, but it is his benevolent delight in humanity that makes this tender and funny novel sing. Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Persea Books (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892552263
• ISBN-13: 978-0892552269
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #537,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Salt is a rich, lyrical multi-storied novel of the Caribbean, May 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Salt (Hardcover)

The novel Salt (Faber 1996) has won the 1997 Commonwealth Writer's Prize which probably comes as no surprise to the Caribbean reader, for Earl Lovelace is a highly acclaimed and tried writer from Trinidad. He is noted for a profoundly lyrical and ecstatic style which imbues the ordinary with the magic of hope. Ensconsed in the landscape of the island, the novel Salt weaves the stories of some familiar characters like Miss Myrtle and Bango with some new and yet untold stories, particularly those of Caribbean politicians hailing from a rainbow of ethnic backgrounds. These men have been given a mandate after independence to change the social structure of the island, but are shown to be ineffectual, bombastic, idealistic, confused. Lovelace' touch is as usual however compassionate. He is deeply insightful of the misfit between the aspirations of political figures and the resources of the island, which are rooted in his narrative with a connection to Africa. This is embodied in the figure of an old stickfighter Bango who knows and tells the stories of the island, but who is also shown to point a way forward with his annual multi-ethnic parade of children. Bango carries the weight of the island's past with a conviction of his own belief in the value of a community of feeling, which makes the politician's plans all the more heavy, foreign, absurd, misguided. And so, contrasting village folk with the urban politician, a characteristic distinction made in Caribbean and African literature, Lovelace writes urgently of the need to recover the past in a way which can fill the present more meaningfully, to erase the loss which came with the forced movement of peoples across the Atlantic, to even come to re-remember that there has been that loss. This central narrative is spun around another one of the relationship between women and men, and between mothers and sons. The men appear in the active dreams of the women, especially the single women. Yet the women in the everyday world are seen to support, advise, guide the men. The mutualities within these relationships as evoked in Salt is perhaps not politically correct yet is conveyed as a reality nevertheless. It is hard to capture in this short review the depth of feeling that Lovelace brings to these characters, in their small actions, their few words, and their large as life troubles. This book is therefore highly recommended to those interested in new literature of change, protest, and celebration

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Students Love This Book, March 3, 2008

By 

Paul Ortiz (Santa Cruz, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Salt: A Novel (Paperback)

I use Earl Lovelace's novel "Salt" in a course I teach on the African Diaspora at UC-Santa Cruz. Several years after taking this course, former students write me that this is one of the books that has changed their lives. The book is ostensibly about slavery and its aftermath in postcolonial Trinidad. However, it is one of those novels that quickly forces the reader to look in the mirror and ask some fundamental questions including: "What is my relationship to slavery, colonialism, and freedom?" Reminiscent of August Wilson: "Is it possible to live a life of dignity by ignoring the past?"

Salt is also outstanding in its efforts to explore the complex relations between peoples of African and Asian descent in Trinidad and the Western Hemisphere. Lovelace wants the reader to have a clear sense that the peoples of Indian Diaspora have been an integral part of the Caribbean. The character Sonan's remarkable grandfather Moon Lochan was the first person in his Indian family to run for elected office against a majority African political party. (During colonialism, Trinidadians were "allowed" to pick a few elected officials to represent them in the colonial council. However, the governor had veto power over all decisions and most "representatives" in the council were actually hand-picked by the British.) Moon and his wife Dularie build the family business over the next several decades after the family had arrived as indentured laborers sometime in the 19th century. (Lovelace is deliciously vague on these details.)

There are many more dimensions to this wonderful novel. The reader will find one of the most astute considerations of male/female relationships in recent literary history. Lovelace is clear: true emancipation will not occur unless the relationships between men and women become fully equal. All and all, a brilliant novel of the African Diaspora.

0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No flavor in SALT, May 24, 2010

By 

Dan A. Ribble "olddwolf" (ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Salt: A Novel (Paperback)

This is soul on ice for Jamaicans. A long wail of self-pity and victimhood. The seller sent me a fine copy, but any price is too high for this dismal, deservedly obscure work.