The Salt Roads (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It went in white, but it will come out a mulatto in a few months' time, yes?..." (more)
Key Phrases: backra men, glass whale, salt roads, Mister Pierre, Hopping John, Saint Domingue (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In beautiful prose, Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads tells how Ezili, the African goddess of love, becomes entangled in the lives of three women. Grief-powered prayers draw Ezili into the physical world, where she finds herself trapped by her lost memories and by the spiritual effects of the widespread evil of slavery. Her consciousness alternates among the bodies/minds of several women throughout time, but she resides mostly in three women: Mer, an Afro-Caribbean slave woman/midwife; Jeanne Duval, Afro-French lover of decadent Paris poet Charles Baudelaire; and Meritet, the Greek-Nubian slave/prostitute known to history as St. Mary of Egypt.

Ezili becomes entangled with Mer because the midwife's prayers helped draw her into the mortal world. The novel presents a reasonable, though undeveloped, connection between Meritet/St. Mary, the Virgin Mary, and the goddesses of Africa. However, it's not clear why Ezili becomes entangled with Jeanne Duval. This is because The Salt Roads is sketchy, its three storylines compressed; the novel reads more like three novellas incompletely braided. This is a shame, because each mortal character's life could have made a fine, full, fascinating novel by itself.

John W. Campbell Award winner Nalo Hopkinson's first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel, the New York Times Notable Book Midnight Robber, was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and James Tiptree Jr. Awards. The Salt Roads is her third novel. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

Whirling with witchcraft and sensuality, this latest novel by Hopkinson (Skin Folk; Midnight Robber) is a globe-spanning, time-traveling spiritual odyssey. When three Caribbean slave women, led by dignified doctress Mer, assemble to bury a stillborn baby on the island of Saint Domingue (just before it is renamed Haiti in 1804), Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean goddess of love and sex, is called up by their prayers and lamentations. Drawing from the deceased infant's "unused vitality," Ezili inhabits the bodies of a number of women who, despite their remoteness from each other in time and space, are bound to each other by salt-be it the salt of tears or the salt that baptized slaves into an alien religion. The goddess's most frequent vehicle is Jeanne Duval, a 19th-century mulatto French entertainer who has a long-running affair with bohemian poet Charles Baudelaire. There is also fourth-century Nubian prostitute Meritet, who leaves a house of ill repute to follow a horde of sailors, but finds religion and a call to sainthood. Meanwhile, the seed of revolution is planted in Saint Domingue as the slaves hatch a plan to bring down their white masters. Ezili yearns to break free from Jeanne's body to act elsewhere, but can do so only when Jeanne, now infected with syphilis, is deep in dreams. Fearing that she will disappear when death finally calls Jeanne, Ezili is drawn into the body of Mer at a cataclysmic moment and is just as quickly tossed back into other narratives. Though occasionally overwrought, the novel has a genuine vitality and generosity. Epic and frenetic, it traces the physical and spiritual ties that bind its characters to each other and to the earth.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books; First Edition edition (November 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446533025
• ISBN-13: 978-0446533027
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,439,293 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting...., November 16, 2003

By	Phyllis Rhodes (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads centers on the spirit, Ezili's (a goddess of love and seduction) emergence in three women throughout time. The reader gets a glimpse of her in Mer, a lesbian slave woman healer, in the early 1800's on the Caribbean island of St. Domingue (Haiti) during a burial of a stillborn child. The second appearance is in the 1880's within Jeanne, a mulatto Parisian dancer and mistress to a white poet whose purse strings are controlled by his domineering mother. The third woman, Meritet, is a prostitute in an ancient (340's A.D.) Egyptian brothel.

Although these women exist during different time periods, Ezili seems to emerge, exist, and influence each woman simultaneously. With Jeanne, she appears in dreams, and wants to live, act, and breathe through her until Jeanne is physically scarred and disabled from the ravages of a sexually transmitted disease. Mer receives her awakening during a riverside burial ceremony of a stillborn child and Meritet has an instance of self-awareness that allows her to experience the independence of Ezili.

Aside from the Ezili storyline, each main character has her fair share of drama, heartbreak, and intrigue. Each are a victim of circumstance; in worlds that were cruel to the black woman. Mer deals with the harsh reality of plantation life and the impending slave revolt that secured Haiti its freedom from colonial rule. The author expertly embeds regional history and folklore into Mer's story. An aging Jeanne struggles with securing her future as a courtesan in a world in which her skin color places her at a disadvantage and Meritet journeys from whoredom to sainthood.

This book is full of symbolism (the incorporation of the value, taste, and healing power of salt, etc. throughout the novel is superb). It also has a mystical and esoteric feel to it; the stories are heart wrenching and the characters are memorable. The author embellished a bit at times with the transcendental themes causing lapses that were very vague and abstract; however for those who enjoy heavy, lyrical prose and surreal themes, it is worth picking up. Overall, it is a wonderfully imagined story that dabbles with the supernatural and issues of self-worth, survival, and redemption.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub, The Nubian Circle Book Club

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth a Look, November 22, 2004

By	J. Ball - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I absolutely loved Ms. Hopkinson's debut novel, BROWN GIRL IN THE RING, so I was really hopeful about this ambitious novel.

THE SALT ROADS is a non-linear story in four parts. The narrative switches back and forth between women of color from all over the world. The characters are Mer, a Haitian healer on a plantation; Jeanne, a mixed race woman in Baudelaire's France; Thais, an Egyptian hooker in Greece; and Ezili, the goddess figure that loosely ties the narratives together.

SALT ROADS tells their tales of love and lost. While the premise is engaging, I was never really aborbed with it and didn't find any of the characters (except for Mer) engaging. Self-absorbed Jeanne, for example, is particularly unsympathetic and distant.

Hopkinson's strength is in her poetic use of language. Her scenes and dialog are lush and sensual but the story itself left me hanging. Most of the characters are so isolated that it's difficult to see how they truly interact with their surroundings.
In the end, I think I might have enjoyed the novel more had
Ezili been a more dominant character.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Song of Ezili, May 23, 2004

By	Elle Ackers "Dulce_Quod_Utile" (Somewhere in time) - See all my reviews

There are four main characters in THE SALT ROADS, a novel of magic realism. Nalo Hopkinson uses a broken narrative approach to tell their stories, which some readers may find hard to follow.
Mer is a healer woman held in slavery on a plantation in late 18th century Saint Domingue, which will someday become Haiti. Jeanne Duval is a dancer and mistress to the writer/critic Charles Beaudelaire in mid-19th France. Thais is half Nubian/half Greek dancing girl/prostitute in late 4th century Alexandria, Egypt; she gives rise to the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt.
The fourth character connects the other three together. She is Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean lwa/ancestor spirit/goddess. Ezili has many aspects, but is commonly thought of as the mother ocean goddess and the names and nicknames of the characters reflect this: Mer (sea in French), lemer, Meritat (Thais's Egyptian name given to her by her friend Neferkare). Unbeknownst to the three women, Ezili rides them, that is, she possesses them for reasons that even Ezili doesn't understand. At first, the reader, like the characters doesn't know what is going on, but as the book progresses it becomes clearer.
This is a novel of sorrow and celebration, of bondage and liberation, of strength and perseverance. Ezili's siren song sounds both strange and powerful to my ears.