Customer Reviews

The Ships

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The title of this first novel from Honduran writer Quesada refers to the ships that come with empty holds ready to whisk the pineapple harvest to the four corners of the earth. Their arrival is the one beacon of hope for the poor field workers who populate this novel: "The ships made us all happy; we knew that when they came in we'd earn more money, and there couldn't be any more money than in those ships anywhere.... The city might be a lot of fun but when there were no ships, everything quieted down, even the music." The ships represent hope and the outside worldóbrief flashes of happiness.

Guillermo is a young man living in the coastal city of La Ceiba in 1979. He'd like to be attending college in the capital, studying to be a writer, but instead we find him about to start work as a pineapple picker for Standard Fruit Company. Fortunately, the other workers who show him the ropes don't hold his intellectual ambitions against him, and he's soon a part of the group. The story sort of meanders along choppily as Guillermo falls in love with a clerk at Standard Fruit and larger events drift across the background. Chief among these are a strike by the union to try and get the raise they are promised in their contract. Meanwhile, across the border in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas have given Somoza the boot, and the question is whether the winds of change are going to spill over the border.

Guillermo is thinly portrayed, and too often feels like the author's attempt as self-portrait of the artist as a young worker. None of the supporting cast emerge in great detail either, and the book suffers as a result. The strike and the war next door give Quesada the opportunity to trot out some of the bitter leftist sentiment one might expect from a Latin American writer of the era. It doesn't help that the prose falls into some of the stylistic traps one often sees from young writers, especially Quesada's attempt to cram all manner of narrative delivery forms into the book. We get omniscient narration, interior monologues, letters, an overarching story, and a series of unfathomable sections in italics about intellectual freedom. All in all, there are moments of flash, but it's not a particularly rewarding read.

This book is very well written and very easy to read. It contains short chapters that give a glimpse into the lives of everyday people and their concerns, personal relationships, fears and daily work.
I read the book because I am going to Honduras soon and wanted to have some idea of what a writer from this country might be talking about and what the style of the writing would be like.
I highly recommend this book it gives vivid descriptions of several towns and the daily lives of company workers.
However, my next read was "The Big Banana" by the same author and I enjoyed it even more.
I hope he writes some more stories very soon.