I really quite liked this book but I also had some issues with it. Firstly it is written in a quite simplistic almost childlike way, initially this is because we are hearing the voice of Celia as the first person. This voice didn’t mature however as Celia grew older and instead retained its childlike quality, I actually really liked the way it was written but it did make the novel feel a bit sparse. I’m actually engaged to a Trinidadian and I understood a lot of the references to the flora, fauna and food of the islands but they really could have done with more explanation, that’s not to say you want to be bogged down in the minutiae but sometimes it felt as if Ms Smyth was simply peppering the story with as many references to all things Trinidadian as she could to somehow prove her pedigree as a Trini writer. I felt she could’ve spent a bit more time and effort in describing 1950’s Trinidad too. She did however get the dialogue spot on, I could almost hear the characters speaking as I read the book, the accent was clearly defined in the words. The story itself is pretty predictable, poor girl has hard time at home goes to the big city and is taken advantage of by rich white boss. Then that is followed by the most spectacularly obvious ‘twist’ I have ever read, the author spent far to much time setting the scene for it and in doing so made it incredibly obvious. That said it was still a very enjoyable book, it kept me coming back for more and the characters were very well written and you felt you wanted to read more whenever you put the book down.Normally I hate when a book waffles on unnecessarily and the author has obviously fleshed it out, this one suffers from the opposite of that. I found myself relying on my actual memories of the places rather than having them described to me. The references that I didn’t get I found myself either asking my fiancée about or Wikipedia-ing them. There could definitely have been a bit more description all round and I hope that wasn’t the result of an over zealous editor, as for me it stopped this book quite reaching the level of a ‘very’ good read. I knew from the moment I saw the title of this book that it had to have a West Indian connection and it did...Trinidad and Tobago to be precise. Having lived there for 4 months I could identify with the people and places. Celia's story is so sad, she's never truly happy and always searching for something. She asks herself more than once "what to do, what to do" and you really wonder what she IS going to do. Her innocence was stolen when she was 16 and she never got over it. This is a good read especially for a new author and I'm hoping the author has plans for a sequel.
What do You think about Het Huis Bij De Plantage (2009)?
