CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT (2013)
Edwidge Danticat
Vintage # 98780307271792,
256 pp.
* *
Guess I’ll play
the Grinch early. I’ve now read two novels by Haitian-in-exile Edwidge Danticat
and I’ll be damned if I get her appeal. Here’s what she reveals to us: Haiti is
awful—more awful than you can even imagine. It’s a land wracked by corruption,
gangs, crushing poverty, natural disasters, and a well-earned reputation for
being a failed state. Name your negative social statistic and Haiti is at or
near the bottom. One’s heart goes
out to Haiti, but this doesn’t make Ms. Danticat a great writer. You could
learn all that I just told you by reading the CIA Fact Sheet on Haiti and you
could skip the heavy-handed metaphors, the flights into fable, and the
contrived flirtations with magical realism.
The story line,
such as it is in a novel that tries to stitch together overlapping and
non-chronological narratives, revolves around seven-year-old Claire Faustin,
whose impoverished fisherman father Nozias decides to give her away to a local
fabric merchant, Madame Gaelle. He does so out of love; his wife died in
childbirth and he simply cannot provide Claire with a good life. But Claire
disappears on her birthday and the rest of the novel speculates on what
happened to her. With each new wrinkle, another story lies in the fold.
Calire's fate is
revealed in the end, but not before other stories intersect. There is, for
instance, the tale of Bernard, a young man who dreams of being a radio
personality who can bring social change to Haiti—a fateful undertaking that
leads him into the world of gangs and government thugs modeled on the infamous
Tonton Macoute. His story collides with that of the Ardin family, father Max
being a libidinous but idealistic school master and his son, Max Junior, Bernard’s
best friend who flees to Miami when Bernard meets with misfortune. Max Junior’s return to Haiti years
later is the tripwire for the book’s denouement. Alas, everything in between
feels like filler trying way too hard to be significant. The magical and
lyrical web that’s supposed to keep us spellbound amidst Haiti’s tragedy is
like a hastily patched fish net that drops its load at the crucial moment. If
you make it that far….
I did, but I
can’t say I’m any more enlightened for doing so. This is one of those books
where everything is a metaphor for something you already got. Haiti is bad.
Check. Hope dies in Haiti. Check. Not even the seaside beauty of Ville Rose,
the book’s invented setting, can ward off Haiti’s cancerous brutality. Check. The
harbor lighthouse is a beacon for hope, but its rays are cast seaward. Check. Simple
people get washed away by forces they can’t control. Okay, already. As heartless
as it may sound, I was bored by Claire of
the Sea Light. Paul Farmer’s real-life, metaphor-free descriptions of Haiti
move me far more than Danticat’s musings from Miami. Rob Weir
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