A Simple Distance [Paperback]

K. E. Silva (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2006

When Jean Sousa’s uncle, a high-ranking politician on the fictional Caribbean -island of Baobique, is diagnosed with brain cancer, Jean is forced to reconcile difficult family relationships and her place among them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this earnest debut, young attorney and biracial lesbian Jean Sousa is accustomed to living between worlds. But it's Jean's Jamaica Kinkaid–like relationship with her mother, Sophia, and her mother's homeland, the fictional Caribbean island of Baobique, that has always given her the most difficulty: "I cannot think of a single thing I hate more in this world than unraveling my mother's knots." Though Sophia has returned to Baobique after many years in the U.S., Jean still feels her reach, especially when Sophia demands to visit her in Oakland, Calif. Once there, Sophia's behavior becomes increasingly erratic, including disappearing from Jean's apartment to spend the night on a stranger's porch. Sophia's reappearance leads Jean to recall her most recent visit to Baobique, where her influential uncle lay dying and where Jean has her first sexual relationship with a woman. California attorney Silva writes standard-issue prose that occasionally strains toward portent. The scenes in Baobique convey the most interest and tension, a convincing portrait of a place at an economic and cultural crossroads. By contrast, Jean's current life in Oakland lacks texture and energy, and a legal subplot involving a same-sex couple struggling over custody of their daughter feels forced. (Oct.)
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About the Author

K.E. Silva was born and raised in the mid-western United States; her parents in the West Indies, where her mother returned over a decade ago. Ms. Kingstown lives and writes in Northern California. She also practices civil rights law. This is her first novel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: Akashic Books (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933354119
• ISBN-13: 978-1933354118
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,021,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Under the Mosquito Netting, October 18, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Simple Distance (Paperback)

"IN Baobique, when you look to the mountains, all you see are trees, tall and arching in the wind, their uppermost fronds green and, perhaps, slick with rain; at night, maybe two or three houses with electric lights, unless you are down south in the capitol." Jean, a US attorney based in the Bay Area, has been chary of visiting her West Indian family for many years, but as she points out, "crisis is never convenient," and finally, after an absence of many years, she returns to the magical island of Baobique, a contested site of lush beauty, closeknit family groupings, and yet a vein of homophobia which had exiled her and her lover, Susan, many years before the main action of the book takes place.

Silva's first novel brings Baobique to life in all of its puzzling contradictions, and under the aromatic insularity of its touch, our heroine shakes off some of her US blues and begins to enter more fully into an integrated existence than she has since childhood. Jean's mother and father took her to a nearly all white Chicago suburb, hoping for a better life, and then one day her mother returned to help her family and to tend to the Manderley-like family house, Godwyn, now decrepit and falling victim to fast-growing tropical undergrowth. And then finally it is the daughter's turn to visit the house--a house haunted by the spirits of family dead and alive, and a history mired in a colonial past never far from racism.

Jean's love for another woman sets her free emotionally from some of the family tangles, but her pride is also damaged by the hatred she feels. Anyone who has ever kept a secret from his or her family will relate to our narrator's plight, and so will anyone who has ever longed to go back to an island. This is Silva's first novel, though you might not guess it from the finely structured storytelling, spanning multiple times and places, and constantly shifting back and forth, like beads on an abacus, through the events of a family tree flung far by diaspora and postcolonial nomadism.

She is especially good at bringing nature alive, fresh and new and wet, as city girl Jean now confronts the impossibly verdant land of her birth. And she's great at family: Jean's Caribbean relatives are a lively, sometimes raucous bunch with great personalities--and yet you can see why they'd be incredibly annoying en masse! The house, Godwyn, carved out of its patch of jungle, shimmers in the background of A SIMPLE DISTANCE like a half-ruined shrine. You will be anxious to find out what happens on Jean's voyage, and on the way you'll discover many lovely and variant truths about what it's like to be human. Once we're divided, can we ever be made whole?