Customer Reviews

Trinidad Noir (Akashic Noir)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is an enjoyable read, with a lot of details from Trinidad life and culture. It's great to have a collection that represents many members of the writing community.

I bought Trinidad Noir and read each story with the greatest interest. Lisa Allen-Agostini wrote one of my favorites but there are many great ones in this collection. Truth is, not a weak link in the chain, all the stories terrific in different ways. Some like poems wandering in and out of the tricky emotional and physical landscape of Trinidad. Some get right under your skin and you'll read them twice: Oonya Kempadoo's opening line "Trinidad never promised me anything" stays with me as does her nettly, sweet pungent story. The smuggler's morality tale by Willi Chen has this line: "All my life I have been a wretched soul" and I was stuck like glue to this story. Baldeosingh's rape in the cane is like no rape you've ever read or heard about in your life and I loved the last line of the story: "In the clear light of the moon, the man's eyes were open and aware and staring mutely at her." The beauty of this story is that it's somehow moral, immoral and amoral all at the same time. Shani Mootoo's sex, death, and butterflies is another stunner. Tiphanie Yanique's story -- well, I read this three times, savoring it more with each reading. But the greatest you-win-you-lose-you-win story is Agostini's Pot Luck. I was hooked when I read this lovely line -- "She always left him, wandering off like a cat without provocation or explanation..." Single lines at the front and the end of a story often tell me if I'm going to like it, and all of these -- I can't possibly mention every writer though I'd like to! -- have lines of tense, prophetic poetry. I've always sided with those who tell tales this way, as if poetry were the story's real reason for being. All of these noir moments are alive and that is their greatest virtue. Nothing else matters as long as the stories breathe. And these do. Every single one of them.

This book is a collection of stories from various Trinidadian authors.
I must say I could not put the book down once I stared reading it.
I got it as a present for someone but then I enede up reading kit first before I wrapped it up
Boy was I glad that I did.
Sometimes there will be stories that you just want to go on and on forever.
I wasn't disappointed with any of these offerings of the Trinidad experience.
I highly recommend this book.

This book is a great read for those who might have been born in Trinidad, yet raised and live in another country. Myself, being born in Trinidad and raised in the States, I was at first unsure of the emotions or images of Trinidad that I was unfamiliar with.

This antholgy gives me all the answers i need. This is a great summertime read for those who are born or married into Trinidad culture. The most important aspect of the book is the language/dialect. By the time you finish reading the storuies you feel as though your uncles or cousins who still live in Trinidad are talking to you directly. Also, this work of fiction brings up many of the issues in current Trinidad society: Homosexuality, kidnappings, rapes, race relations and politics. Another aspect is the editors ability to share stories from all over the island. From country to town, south to "up nort'".
The stories are as diverse as the people of the island!

Readers looking forward to noir fiction from an exotic locale are likely to be disappointed with this pedestrian collection of mostly amateur writing, with many stories unable to adhere even loosely to the characteristics of the genre. Some of the stories are just plain self-indulgent (there's one in which two of the narrator's three lovers murder the third because he has become too possesive; another in which an elaborate arrest and conviction for murder is staged merely to discourage the protagonist from selling marijuana), while others rely on convenient plot twists and stereotypes: dreadlocked, surfboard-wielding novice drug dealers get in over their heads only to be saved by a neat circumstance; contract killing goes wrong and cardboard-cutout characters get killed, etc. Keith Jardim's "The Jaguar" is a notable exception, but for the most part the editors' promise of "a decidedly literary noir collection" that shows "the seedy side of life" is never realized. "There's fodder enough here for ten volumes of Trinidad Noir" is the introductory boast. Let's hope they stop at one.