1. The Salt Roads is SO FRUSTRATING. Because there were a couple things I really loved about it and one or two things I hated with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. And those things seemed more significant to the book than the things I liked.2. First of all, I love the idea of the novel. It's a powerful and layered concept for a book. There are so many angles to examine, and so many resources to mine, that the potential is enormous. It could have been remarkably affecting. It is certainly an engaging book, although I almost feel that by using so many first-person viewpoints, Hopkinson is, um, cheating. Or anyway . . . she's covering all her bases, without having to work very hard at it.3. I also really loved how flexible sexuality is. That makes a kind of sense, because the book takes place before modern constructions of sexuality (which I think are loosening, but only because we have more names for things), but how often does historical fiction care about that? Not often enough. But ambiguity is present here, in spades. So that is definitely a point in the book's favor.4. Okay, but now I get to talk about the things I hated. Primarily, I hated the way The Salt Roads was written. LOATHED it. On reflection, the style of the book is tied very closely to the first-person narration, so the sentences are choppy and conversational. Unfortunately, this makes them seem disingenuous - although you feel very close (physically, not emotionally) to the characters, it's difficult to connect with them. I'm tempted to call the style stream-of-consciousness, except I like stream-of-consciousness, at least in its modernist incarnation . . . this is post-modern, but usually I quite like that too. Anyway, here is a passage - picked at random - that may help indicate why I find the style wearing (although this is a third person interlude, actually): Patrice sighed. They were near his cabin. He kept walking, kept thinking. He heard Makandal's soft goodbye, and out of his eye saw the three-and-a-half-legged hound running off to where Couva would be twisted painfully into the stocks, her body cramping and twitching. You gods, let Makandal's plan work. Let the Ginen cease suffering.5. Another problem with the book is that it is physical without being sensual at all. The sex scenes are fairly graphic, but they are barely interesting (or, at least, the sex isn't; some of the politics are). Hopkinson is very good at conveying physical discomfort, but pleasure is not within her capabilities. Given the role destructive pleasure plays in at least one story line (Jeanne Duval and Baudelaire), I like it when books have a definite sense of physicality, and that is certainly a strength of The Salt Roads.5a. But, um, I do think a passage from The Golden Notebook is relevant: So all that is a failure too. The blue notebook, which I had expected to be the most truthful of the notebooks, is worse than any of them. I expected a terse record of facts to present some sort of a pattern when I read it over, but this sort of record is as false as the account of what happened on 15th September, 1954, which I read now embarrassed because of its emotionalism and because of its assumption that if I wrote ‘at nine-thirty I went to the lavatory to shit and at two to pee and at four I sweated’, this would be more real than if I simply wrote what I thought. And yet I still don’t understand why. Because although in life things like going to the lavatory or changing a tampon when one has one’s period are dealt with on an almost unconscious level, I can recall every detail of a day two years ago because I remember that Molly had blood on her skirt and I had to warn her to go upstairs and change before her son came in.Basically, it feels a little like the physical detail (which in TSR is purely factual, and not atmospheric) is used a bit like a crutch.6. Much like the book in general, I wanted to love the characters and ended up disliking most of them. Thais comes too late in the book to be integrated with the other stories - she feels tacked on, although I love the concept. Also, she is rather stupid, and that's off-putting. Mer is conceptually interesting, and makes fascinating choices, but mostly two-dimensional. I think Jeanne Duval is the most successful, the most rounded character and probably the only dynamic one. The parts of the novel from Ezili's perspective are truly bad.7. If I hadn't wanted to like this book so much, I would have liked it more. Sorry, The Salt Roads.
This is the complete review as it appears at my blog dedicated to reading, writing (no 'rithmatic!), movies, & TV. Blog reviews often contain links which are not reproduced here, nor will updates or modifications to the blog review be replicated here. Graphic and children's reviews on the blog typically feature two or three images from the book's interior, which are not reproduced here.Note that I don't really do stars. To me a book is either worth reading or it isn't. I can't rate it three-fifths worth reading! The only reason I've relented and started putting stars up there is to credit the good ones, which were being unfairly uncredited. So, all you'll ever see from me is a five-star or a one-star (since no stars isn't a rating, unfortunately).I rated this book WARTY!WARNING! MAY CONTAIN UNHIDDEN SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!This novel made no sense at all to me. I was interested in reading it because it was about slavery in the Caribbean (so I thought), but the real story of that horror was demeaned by the author's amateur attempts at trying to imbue her novel with "kewl", and by her bringing "magic" into it.I know that superstition was (and is) a part of primitive people's lives, and that Victorians believed in spirits, but having characters conjure up a vision from a chamber pot full of urine and menstrual fluid seemed to me to be not only gross, but to cheapen the story being told about the conditions under which slaves were forced to live, and turning the whole thing into a gaudy circus. And that bit wasn't even in the Caribbean, it was in Paris!I have no idea what that had to do with anything because I quit reading this novel at this point. I couldn't continue because I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at how sorry it truly was. Somehow I'm thinking that this isn't the effect you want to have on your reader when writing about a grotesque topic like slavery.The misguided cuteness really swung into play between pages 38 and 50, and it was so ridiculous as to be a parody. After a chapter about a stillborn baby and its burial, we immediately get a page (39) containing only the world BREAK/ in bold block caps, followed by page which contains only two paragraphs describing some obscure, anonymous event which has played no part in the story so far, the next page contains only BEAT!, the next another three obscure paragraphs, the page bears only ONE-, the next only one paragraph, again obscure and anonymous, disconnected from the main story, the next has three dots, a down arrow, and the word DROP, the next more anonymous paragraphs, the next BLUES, and finally we get to another unnumbered chapter on page 49. I can't tell you what a thrill that was to read. I can't tell you because I was mourning, by that time, not for the dead child, but for tragically wasted trees.If I’d wanted to read a humorous novel about slavery, which I don’t, I could no doubt have found one. If I’d wanted to read a parody, I could have written one. I've done it before! I actually wanted neither of these. I wanted an intelligent and serious story about slavery, not amateur experimental fiction designed with no other purpose, it seemed to me, than to gross out the reader with this day-late and dollar-short effort to be avant garde and ultra hip. I cannot recommend this novel based on what I read, and I certainly have no interest in reading more of this nor anything else by this author for that matter.
What do You think about The Salt Roads (2004)?
a powerful work about the resilience of a people brilliantly written by Nalo Hopkinson. my only difficulty with this book was the three (or more) streams of narrative & the ethereal out of body being that links them all. i always find when a bunch of different narratives are going on at the same time that one is strongest & that's the one i am most interested in. in this case, the Haitian slaves working in the sugar cane fields were what caught my attention most. the storyline of Jeanne, Baudelaire's lover seems like it could have used further development, as intriguing as it was, it was overcome by its bleakness, a syphilitic woman abandoned by the mama's boy poet. the third story that took place in Alexandria was fascinating too, but barely sketched in. Hopkinson's talent & skill are such that she can write intriguing storylines & compelling characters that i have compassion for, but by putting so much in one book, she overwhelms, at least this reader. & then throwing in the occasional contemporary reference to recent history such as Rosa Parks... still it's a powerful & well-written book.
—Amanda
Very complicated--as compared to her first book. This is a fascinating story where Hopkinson takes the grand master narrative of the West--the creation sotry--and recreates it in grounded in black bodies and the diasporic experience of slavery as it was created in the New World. At its deepest level? The novel seeks to answer a singuale question; What happens to the Gods and Goddesses of a people when they are displaced. If deities exisit in and of themselves but are maifested in the worship, faith, imagination of their worshipers, then what happnes when those people are scattered? How do the deities manifest? Who are their famialars? Priestesses? How do they know who they are and how do they perform their fucntions out of context? How do they get trnaslated acorss time, space, in a multitude of bodies, across cultures, langauges not indigenous, not chosen not immediatley their own? What happens to the people and perhaps more intererstngly, what happens to the gods as they exist in the people? So GooD!
—D
Disclaimer: I received a eARC of this through netgalley.com in exchange for a review.Magic realism is one of my favorite writing genres. I spent a lot of time in college reading Angela Carter's works. Nalo Hopkinson's book expands on the tradition and creates a vivid world where a goddess hops into various women to understand the human conditions of love, oppression, and beating the odds. She weaves the stories of three independent woman from three different timelines in such a way that modern audiences can learn to appreciate what they have gone through.I loved this storyline. It took me awhile to figure out what tied these three stories together. It was when I discovered the use of the "goddess" voice and went back to the beginning that I really understood what was going on. I found that my favorite tale was in Mer, and in Mari (Mary) and their journeys through enslavement and enlightenment.This book can be a bit hard to grasp at first. But I recommend you stick with it. Hopkinson will draw you in and you'll be wanting to read parts out loud, the voice and lyrical prose is amazingThank you for allowing us into a brilliant glimpse of the human soul, and the oppression that the blacks went through and the stories of the woman who dealt with it.
—Jaymi
