The next stop in my end-of-the-world reading marathon was Brown Girl in the Ring, the 1998 debut novel by Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican born and Canadian bred author. The book doesn't fit in among the doomsday thrillers I've been reading and to even call this "science fiction" would be false advertising on my part. I was in the mood for something different, a blast of fresh air among the abandoned post-apocalyptic streets, but even by its own standards, the novel really disappointed me.The story takes place in Toronto, where a lawsuit by the Temagami Indian tribe and an international ban on imports of the temagami pine have led to economic collapse in the city. Government has fled to the suburbs, leaving the poor, the weak or the willful to fend for themselves, along with criminal elements preying on them. The situation is like a civil version of the movie Escape From New York and with a little imagination, could almost apply to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.Like Escape From New York and so many science fiction tales, the plot is triggered by a presidential crisis. The infirm Canadian premier is desperate for a heart transplant. Trailing in a bid for re-election, her staff see an opportunity to use public distaste of animal organ farming by declining a pig's heart and resorting to a human one. Complications arise finding a suitable donor in time, so they reach out to Rudy Sheldon, criminal overlord of Toronto, to get them a human heart, stat.Ti-Jeanne is a young, unwed mother who's left her baby's father, a sweet-talking deadbeat named Tony whose addiction to a narcotic called buff cost him his hospital job and pushed him into the employ of Rudy Sheldon. Ti-Jeanne now lives with her surviving family, her grandmother Mami Gros-Jeanne, a medicine woman and practitioner of Afro-Caribbean magic. With Ti-Jeanne's unnamed infant son "Baby", they live in the ruins of Riverdale Farm, formerly a civic recreation space made to resemble a working farm.Young Ti-Jeanne has begun to experience terrifying visions of supernatural creatures of Afro-Caribbean myth: a tall, red creature with a mask for a face known as a Jab-Jab, and a dried up old woman with blue flame leaping from her body called a Soucouyant. Ti-Jeanne finally confides her visions to her grandmother, who reveals that her mother was afflicted with similar visions and was eventually driven mad by them. The women receive an uninvited guest in Tony, who'd been dispatched with one of Rudy's men to kill an organ donor, but fled when he couldn't go through with the deed. Mami agrees to help, taking the couple to the Toronto Crematorium Chapel where she performs religious rites. She summons Papa Osain, a healing spirit, who makes both Ti-Jeanne and Tony invisible through dawn, so long as a rose which Tony offered his lover is kept on Ti-Jeanne's person. The two seek to flee Toronto. The novel I've just described is much more adventure oriented than what we ultimately get with Brown Girl in the Ring. There's a dystopian, ticking clock thriller with supernatural elements and a young couple on the run that lurks between the pages, as well as some very imaginative table setting, but the novel unravels into a lukewarm mess, with flimsy characters, stylistic elements that fail to mesh together, ridiculous hocus pocus and chapter breaks that stops the story cold. Flaws, flaws and more flaws:-- Flaky characters. Ti-Jeanne is one of the most useless heroines I've encountered in fiction in some time. A baby who's birthed a baby, she's living in an abandoned city with no discernible skills and turns into a doormat when her baby's drug addict hoodlum father talks sweet to her. Contrast that with a character like Ree Dolly in Winter's Bone, who's much younger and grows up with much less parental supervision. Ti-Jeanne breathes through her mouth clear through to the end of the book. As Mami says continually, "Stupidness!" If Ti-Jeanne acts like she's got no brain and no spine, Tony is an even bigger fool, messing with criminals and refusing to follow the instructions the women give to help him escape.-- I would've preferred a novel that explored Afro-Caribbean magic in Toronto, or one that rampaged across a dystopian Toronto, but not both at the same time. At 247 pages, this book seems too dense to deal with both fantasy and science fiction in a satisfying way. Science fiction is given to bloat and to throwing too many ingredients into the pot, but in this case, the story just didn't come together for me.-- I have an extreme dislike for deus ex machina and for authors who bail their characters out with divine intervention. Hopkinson steps in a mess with this. There are spirits taking possession of bodies, spirits guiding characters, spirits crossing over to wipe out the bad guys. Again, it seemed as if Ti-Jeanne was the least active character in the story. Sending in a spirit to lead characters out of danger rather than the characters overcoming obstacles is weak writing at best, laziness at worst.-- Another thing that bothered me was the overuse of nursery rhymes, chants, call and responses, song lyrics and so forth as scene breaks. Two or three in a novel of this size would've been enough, but it seems like Hopkinson throws one in every ten pages. Like like blurbs and dedications, my eyes skip right over speed bumps like this and got in the way of what I read books for: the story.I always hope to discover something different when I read genre fiction. Stories with a diversity of character, in this case, black women at the controls, was something I was really looking forward to. Hopkinson demonstrates vision when it comes to imagining the ruins of Toronto. Some of the magic is interesting too, but it's table dressing. The characters and story never materialized for me. I was intrigued enough to finish the book, but would not recommend it.
In the near future, the city of Toronto has collapsed on itself. Anyone with the money or means to leave has done so, abandoning the city centre to live in the safety of the suburbs. The only people left in the actual city are the people who have been unable to leave, who by necessity have developed a new social order from the chaos.At the top of the pile is the posse, run by a vicious man named Rudy. The posse has been offered a huge financial opportunity, and Rudy is willing to do anything to make sure this deal goes through. All he needs is to find a human heart donor, and in a place where only the poor and unwanted remain, that can't be too hard. He even has a former nurse who he can manipulate into doing the delicate removal for him.In a quieter area of the city, Ti-Jeanne lives with her newborn baby and her Mami, a healer woman who uses herbs and her knowledge of African magic to help the people around her. Ti-Jeanne thinks her Mami is nuts and only reluctantly learns the herbs, as Mami seems determined to prepare her to take over the healing some day. When she starts having disturbing dreams and visions, though, she might have to reluctantly agree that Mami is not insane, and the ancient magic is real, which is far more terrifying than the whole thing being in some old woman's head. The terror ramps up even further when the gods start telling Ti-Jeanne that Rudy has to be eliminated, and she's the only one who can do it.The vast majority of the dialogue is written in a Caribbean dialect, and while this isn't nearly as annoying as an author trying to portray an accent by misspelling words, it took some getting used to. Fortunately for me, the narration and inner reflections of the characters are not in dialect, or the book would have taken me a lot longer to get through. Which is not to say the dialect is poorly rendered by any stretch of the imagination. It's not what I'm used to, though, and that means some mental adjustments are required.It's not just the dialect, though. Let's face it, we kind of approach fantasy expecting things to happen a certain way, most of it dictated by our culture and what's come before in the genre. Hopkinson describes her book as "Caribbean magic realism," which is vastly vastly different from the other books on the shelves right now. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, that depends on what you're looking for, and I only mention it so you know what to expect when you pick the book up, since the expectations you bring to a book can make or break the reading experience.Ok, on to things like plot and character. Ti-Jeanne is very human, flawed and relatable. Everything about her rings true, from her misplaced loyalties to her difficulties dealing with motherhood to the core of strength she discovers in herself. She's relatable and nuanced and just beautifully drawn.In addition to the wonderfully fleshed out heroine, the plot is one of those that falls together naturally, where even the plot twists feel natural. My one issue was with the loser ex-boyfriend Ti-Jeanne was still in love with. I didn't feel like the ending he got matched his actions. I'm not saying the only two acceptable endings for an ex is to either reconcile and live happily ever after or to die in a horrible, fiery way, but I never felt like he had to face the consequences of his actions, which left me a little dissatisfied in the end.
What do You think about Brown Girl In The Ring (1998)?
Been on hiatus because of work and things, but hoping to get more reviews back out. :-) If I owe you an email, I'm getting there. Promise. Anyhow. 3.5 stars. I know this book is classified as science fiction, but honestly, it felt more like urban fantasy to me. At best, it was science-fantasy because it does have some science fiction elements. However, those things aren't nearly as pronounced to me as the fantasy portion of the novel.Downtown Toronto has abandoned by the Canadian government after a series of financial disasters that lead to an economic depression. They've blocked the people from leaving the hellhole its become, but those who have money move to the suburbs are allowed to keep their illusion of safety while those who don't are forced to stay in Toronto and fend for themselves, which is largely made of a society of people of color.Depending on the ways of their ancestors, despite their ugly surroundings and reality, they've built up this society that focuses on bartering and relying on the old ideas of their people ranging from India to the Caribbean. That could come in the form of food or knowledge of the land or that can come in the form of more fantastic elements.Ti-Jeanne is a new mother who hasn't named her baby. She's recently moved back in with her grandmother, Gros-Jeanne, due to the baby's father being an addict and needing support that she knows her grandmother can provide. Despite that, Ti-Jeanne fears her grandmother's herbalism and spiritualism powers. She also fears that they may be manifesting in her as her dreams begin to plague her, and she is reluctant to give into that side of her family, especially since her grandmother said the visions made her mother mad before she disappeared. However, there are evils in their city that Ti-Jeanne will eventually have to find the courage to face as she learns not to fear who she is.This is one of the books that I choose from the 2014 Speculative Fiction by Authors of Color Challenge because I wanted to read more spec fic by authors of color. This was a beautifully written book that incorporated so much cultural character to the story. Quotes like this just made my whole reading experience:"Tony could give sweet, sweet talk. Words so nice, they would charm the money from your pocket, the caution from your heart, the clothes from your body. Words so sweet and soothing, they sounded like love, like let me hold you the way your mama never held you, like come and be my only special one, my doux-doux darling. Words that promised heaven."So lyrical and full of flavor and culture, exactly what I've been wanting and looking for in my science fiction and fantasy. Words that speak to me. Words that feel genuine. Words that I can hear people I know in my life saying. Hopkinson created a very scarred, scary, abandoned society, but at the same time, she's made it this diverse place full of colorful characters who are just trying to survive.Now, for the main character, Ti-Jeanne. We had a torrid relationship for a moment. While I appreciated and even empathized with Ti-Jeanne's struggles with being a mother, loving a man that's "no good" for her, and trying to assert herself as a woman to her grandmother, it took me a while to connect with her character. I understood her selfishness and her anger at not only her personal situation but the situation of her city. However, that may have been part of the point to all this. Ti-Jeanne needed to learn to respect, compassion, and selflessness. She needed to learn that, while selfishness is part of human nature, one has to temper it with respect for others.It's one of those books where you want to tell the character you are no more special than anyone else in respect to your needs or wants. Your needs do not outweigh the needs of others. Many of your needs and wants are only different from anyone else's. Many first mothers have troubles. Many of us don't have enough to feed ourselves much less others. Of course, your problems, these problems, seem worst than the next person because they're yours. However, the next person feels the same way about their problems. You are special because you are you, and no one else can say that.However, as Ti-Jeanne grew as a character, I grew to love her much more. Her transformation from this almost girl-child pretending to be a woman to a woman who is not afraid of what power she holds, not just as her grandmother's child, but as her tragic mother's child and as a woman of power herself, is beautifully done. Her grandmother reminded me so much of my own great-grandmother who could be a curmudgeonly soul, but this is how she imparted wisdom and love. Parts of the book like that just made me so nostalgic.I have to say I didn't quite know if I'd come out of this one loving it. I appreciated it, but it took me so long to warm to Ti-Jeanne that I was afraid I was going to like it, but it wasn't going to be that story for me. I'm grateful that I was wrong, and I look forward to more of Hopkinson's wonderfully magic books.
—Tiara
This book starts out appearing to be science fiction. Post-apocalyptic Toronto, in which a center city, ringed by civilized suburbs, has become the lawless fiefdom of a drug lord who has taken over the CN tower. But he's more than a drug lord--he controls the spirits. So, while the SF plot, finding a human heart for Ontario's premier's heart transplant for a fee, with the premier wanting to raise her popularity prior to an election by railing against the pig farms that grow human organs for transplants, goes on in the background, in the foreground, we have a completely different sort of novel. Caribbean magic realism, spirits/healers/traditional medicine/raising the dead.The juxtaposition of dystopic SF with traditional folklore worked well in most places. A few places were contrived--the reader is updated on the entire history of how Toronto collapsed when the main character breaks into a building where she sees old newspaper headlines--but most worked well.Ti-Jean, the main character, is the granddaughter of the spirit healer Mami. She also has a Western world existence, a man she loves but whom she flees when she has a baby--the drug's have taken over her ex-lover's life. And then the drug lord truly takes him. The effects upon the family and the community of power, capitalism, and drugs are all explored. The female Caribbean characters were rich and nuanced. The lover, Tony, mostly so. The white characters, especially the premier, not so much. This is a book you can lose yourself in--the magic realism works much better than the dystopian SF. The magic realism ending was cliffhanger after cliffhanger; the SF ending, not-so-much.As for style, the author made an excellent choice to craft a dialog that did indeed seem like what Afro-Caribbean Canadian street slang might morph into but to stick to standard English in narrative portions. Also, to Anglicize the slang, sticking to a few rules, rather than to try to sound authentically Jamaican. Recommended.
—Allan Dyen-shapiro
i think i responded to this more on account of what i learned from it than on the merits of its prose... which isn't to say it's not an enjoyable novel. it's just a bit flat in a few areas, story-wise (atmosphere, characterizations).the premise is an interesting one. brown girl in the ring concerns a post-apocalyptic toronto, in which a young mother learns to use her caribbean spiritual roots to bring down a local drug dealer. as sci-fi, it's not terribly concerned with alternate realities. in fact, it feels stylistically closer to magic realism, and the "speculative" side of its premise isn't explored in great detail. i wish it left me with a stronger sense of place, to be honest. instead, the scope is mythic, and the characters are somewhat archetypal. there are clear cut heroes and villains throughout, which can feel static and lifeless at times. still, the fable-like structure maintains a certain reverance, and i finished brown girl with the suspicion that a deeper knowledge of caribbean/voodoo/yoruba spiritual practices might have changed the experience dramatically. the book is more concerned with mythology than psychology, perhaps.
—Dan
