Customer Reviews

Satisfy My Soul

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Satisfy My Soul is a beautifully written novel, one that satisfies the soul because it is written with humor, passion, and heart. Colin Channer weaves a multi-layered story that is complex and engaging, one that does not succumb to the formulaic conventions of the romance novel. The characters are believable in their complexity. The story is given substance by the characters' quests for faith as they move between Africa and the diaspora, and between Christianity and the myths and religions that should have been theirs, but have been lost to them with the transport of their ancestors to the West.

The sensual, erotic, lyrical, and poetic elements of the narrative combine with an imaginative plot and Carey's ongoing revision of his feelings for his lover Frances to create a novel that is written like music as much as prose. And just as I would listen many times to a favorite piece of music, I have reread parts of the novel with more appreciation for the work each time.

Colin Channer's first novel, Waiting in Vain, is a book that for any writer would be a hard act to follow. But he is a preternaturally gifted writer, one who has also worked hard to perfect his craft. He has matured as a writer, and brings us a novel that is more sophisticated and beautiful than his first. His writing is always -- in the word Carey Francis uses to describe his lover Frances Carey -- lovely.

I have a battered copy of Colin Channer's,"Waiting In Vain" that I keep on my nightstand. When I travel, it travels with me. I read it several times a year to remain inspired. If you've read "Waiting", then you already know that it is a fatally sexy love story, but it is also a scattering of breadcrumbs that leads us gently and sometimes brutally towards a healing discourse between men and women of the Diaspora. I know a whole slew of women who go to sleep praying that Channer's hero; Adrian 'Fire' Heath will materialize on their doorsteps in the morning.

Colin Channer is a griot like none other. Now, with the advent of "Satisfy My Soul", I'm inclined to believe that he's a shaman who invades the bodies of regular folks, extracts the mystical lyricism from our ordinary lives and then daringly places the formulas for our survival into the hands of the general population.

As an American, baptized in Judeo-Christian doctrine, if a while driving my car an eighteen wheeler swerved into my line I would definitely cry out 'Jesus Lord Have Mercy!' But should I be censored if I am one of those who asks my ancestors to carry my prayers to the feet of God or acknowledges Shango,Osun, Erzulie or Baron Samdi? Should I be fearful of ancestral altars, affirmations incense fetishes or candles? How have I managed to survive when the religion and other cultural aspects of my ancestors are regarded in a suspicuous light? And how important is it anyway? This is the crux of "Satisfy My Soul." When the rubber meets the road what spirits do you call on? The answer to this question straddles social, moral, psychological frontiers, but only scant few like Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and the sweet, delicious and sometimes wicked Channer can raise the stakes by throwing romance into the pot.

Africa is embodied as the soul of a reckless, beautiful untamed woman, Frances. Carey, A Judeo-Christian oriented Rastafarian, is her passionate, yet confused suitor. They were lovers in an ancient African existence and they have a chance to get it right in this life. Though I will never understand Africa as those born there, I accept and seek Africa because quite honestly I am homesick on some levels and I am not alone. The stakes are so high in this novel, because as you realize the things in your history that you can not accept, you must come to realize that failure to accept the past is a barrier that impedes self-love and all of the other kinds of love...spiritual, paternal, fraternal, maternal, and romantic.

At the end of this book, I cried for Frances and Carey.
Tears for what they could be to each other and what history will not let them be. These star-crossed lovers inhabit the small needing space required for yin and yang can slip themselves around each other. They have supernatural sexual encounters that transcend traditional gender roles, seeking penetration of the very soul. If you're familiar with Channer's work, then you already know that he dances on a supremely erotic line. The power of his literary voice is in its beauty and utter fearlessness. The romantic element in "Satisfy My Soul" is as much a healing balm for the reader as for the characters. Colin Channer takes you "there" this time. With the creation of Fire and Sylvia in "Waiting In Vain," he showed us how to get it right. In this novel, he shows us why it is so hard to accomplish that feat.

My overwhelming thought upon finishing, "Satisfy", it is get it right, right now, in this life. To quote Bob Marley, as Colin Channer is wont to do, " If you know your history, then you know your destiny..."

Congrats Colin Channer, this brave book is so necessary.

I've had this book for over 2 month. I've been saving it. After reading Waiting in Vain I knew what to expect from this author and he has surpassed my rather lofty expectations. Satisfy My Soul is a novel that will haunt you. It is a canvas of exotic locations and erotic interplay. It is a brilliant, eloquent book of contradictions, at times wickedly naughty then moments later warm and alluring. It characters are hopelessly flawed and later just examples of the human condition. It's mystical and worldly and then spiritual and pious.

This is all reflected in the characters Colin has created. No one can capture in written word the subtle emotional changes in human thought and behavior quite like Mr. Channer. Frances is a walking contradiction; she is a whore yet totally faithful to her man. Carey is intrigued by her a little put-off by her propensity toward bedding many men, but he finds a "dirty girl" a bit of a challenge can't pass up an opportunity to clean up after other men. Carey is a very flawed individual but spends an enormous amount of time intellectualizing and reveling in the flaws of others. Yet he does very little work on his own psyche. It is true brilliance that Colin can sell us these characters, make us care deeply, how dare we judge, are we really that different?

Colin's command of language is astounding. He uses some of the literary techniques used in poetry such as repetition and free form. In one of my favorite sections of the books Carey is on his way to France's home and he is talking to her on his phone and he says he can't remember "the order of the conversation or who said what" and then Colin lists about 30 lines of the most erotic, intriguing conversation in no particular order or structure, Amazing! I just sat there looking at it..........

Remember when Julia Roberts said she didn't want to live in a world where she had an Oscar and Denzel Washington didn't. I don't want to live in a world where Colin Channer does not make the bestsellers list.

This is one of the best novels that I have read since WAITING IN VAIN. In fact, it is the best novel that I have read since WAITING IN VAIN. I didn't think that Channer could top his debut. It was an incredibly beautiful rendering of a complicated story. But he has.

SATISFY MY SOUL is a book that asks some difficult questions. It answers some of them and leaves us to ponder the rest. It is a novel that will transform you, a novel that will pull you out of yourself into a higher consciousness. Carey, Kwabena, Frances and Nazia are some of the most frighteningly alluring characters in recent fiction. They are frightening because they are so much like ourselves.

Congratulations Mr. Channer, again you have made Jamaica proud.

SATISFY MY SOUL is the kind of work that stays with you. It gets under your skin. It gets into your blood. At 243 pages it is small, but its achievements are huge.

It is sexy. It is frightening. It is lyrical. It is challenging. It is maddening. It is sweet. It is nasty. It is honest. It is transformative.

The writing is spectacular. It sings. The story is compelling. You cannot put it down. On the merit of language and story alone SATISFY MY SOUL is a spectacular achievement, setting Channer apart from the people he is often unfairly compared to ... E. Lynn Harris, Eric Jerome Dickey, Omar Tyree. By the way the comparison is unfair to them and not to Channer.

But the real achievement of SATISY MY SOUL is its originality. It deals with the issue of the middle passage in a way that makes that distant experience not just real but relevant. Its characters are drawn with depth and clarity. You know them. You talk to them. You worry about them. You get angry with them. You admire them. You want for them. You come to feel as if you know them in intimate ways, like friends and lovers from your very own life.

This novel's mix of eroticism and spirituality brought me lasting satisfaction. I have been changed for life.

...exclaiming how very much I love Colin Channer's writing. He is a master of lush description, honesty and realness. While reading Waiting in Vain, in fact, I put the book down several times to tuck my toes more tightly under me, to avoid his frequent trampling of them. He truly sang my life with his words, or the life of any thinking, passionate, non-Buppie (arguable) person of color trying to make a way in an all too slick, passionless world.

I found myself putting down Satisfy My Soul often, too...to scratch my head in confusion.

I think he simply tried to tackle too much in too few pages. Don't get me wrong, it was the most beautifully written/reading/sounding thing I've read in months, but it seemed hurried, underdeveloped, and at times over-ambitious.

I am certain that he is capable of Gabriel Garcia Marquez scale greatness (whose work he refers to in SMS), and there are often glimmers of brilliance...but he falls short. A wonderful idea, beautifully written, but he needed at least 150 more pages to do the storyline, characters, and the novel as a whole, the justice it deserved.

I absolutely believe that after a couple more books, when he decides to be the writer he can be, the writer he was born to be, he will be a literary force to be reckoned with...black, white, or other. Unless, of course, he chooses to limit himself to writing sex/love/sex stories forever, in which case he would be selling himself short.

SMS clearly opens the door to where he can go if he wants to.

Collin Channer has moved beyond romance. This story is set almost entirely in Jamaica & South Carolina, yet it is about Africa. Why is this sexual story of two extravagant characters so exhilarating to me, with no African ancestry? Why am I so involved in these characters? Through the lens of a question important to black Americans, my questions come to light - questions of violence and impulse, what is spiritual & what substitutes when it is missing, how do I move past old patterns, what do relationships that matter require, what value is my intellectual heritage.... And of Africa - there are so many subtle perspectives here, not the idealized village of communal values.

And none of this would matter, except every word reflects the story of these particular characters in their particular moment. From the very first page, it is going to tell their truth, even if it dispels the magic, even if it shows the out-of-sync moments, even as it ends in a very different way than I expected. At times the story is told out of sequence, which can be confusing; yet through the language of seduction and sensuality I am drawn into their realm, and then I am allowed to see much more....

So, be challenged. The words will sing you there if you go with them, and the questions will remain to transform you.

This book is on my list for favorite reads of 2002 and it will be quite a challenge to find something to top it. Reading this was like embracing a long sensuous poem of love and tragedy. Channer gives us insight into politics, religion, philosophy, race and of course passion. He makes one believe you are actually in Kingston, South Carolina and Ghana. What happens when you find that person with whom you would spend your last night on earth?

Carey McCullough, a successful playwright, has known many women and loved them all. And then he meets Frances, a woman he feels he has known his whole life. Could they have been soul mates 400 years ago in Africa? Their relationship is not easy. He has doubts about this woman's motives who he believes saved his life at a time when he was guilt ridden about his father's death. Indeed family dynamics weighs heavily throughout this novel. Carey's own family background is convoluted with roots in Ghana, Jamaica and Cuba. Torn about his own religious beliefs, Carey gives Frances an ultimatum and then flees Kingston to go to South Carolina where his best friend Kwabena and his family resides and there is capitulated into a turn of events he find himself helpless to reverse . Kwabena, to Carey, is a picture of an upright pious man, but it turns out that Kwabena has his own demons of which Carey is inextricably entangled.

With his propensity to weave language in the most compelling prose with remarkable metaphors and foreshadowing, readers are left with a feeling of surreal awe. I turned the last page and sighed. The litmus test of a well-told story for me is how a book resonates days after I have finished it. If I stop in the middle of my day and remember a scene or phrase from that book then it has indeed satisfied my soul.

He is artistic, poetic, eloquent and adventurous---he takes you places you have never been. He makes the mundane seem sexy and orgasmic.

Colin Channer has delivered another mesmerizing love story, featuring four very intelligent and loving, yet flawed characters.
SATISFY MY SOUL is extremely thought provoking; it's complex, yet entertaining and erotic. It evokes passion and your interest in the spiritual and religious beliefs of Frances and Carey, and at the same time it amazes you with the tragic love story of four very separate, yet entwined lives.

You will be inspired. You will want more.

This book captured me with initial whimsy and took me on a journey that left me not only satified but exhausted--exhausted in a good way, like after good sex, sex in which all the senses were engaged. The rhythm compelled me forward while the characters kept me entranced. At the end I wished for additional pages not because I was not happy but because I wanted to stay with and satisfy Carey' soul. Mr Channer has a history of writing well defined characters (Waiting In Vain). His use of dialogue to pull you along the story's path is brilliant. Thank you Mr. Channer for a wonderful journey.