Indira Gabriel, recently abandoned by her lover, embarks on a project to reinvigorate a dilapidated bar into something special. Like a Trinidadian Cheers, a rich cast of characters come together in this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet first novel. At the book’s centre is the unforgettable Indira, with her ebullience and sadness, her sharpness and honesty, obsession with the daily horoscope and addiction to increasingly absurd self-help books.
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“Often wickedly funny, always profoundly Trini,
Barbara Jenkins’ debut novel assures her ‘rightest place’ among the vital new chorus of women who are redefining the English-infused Caribbean.” Robert Antoni
Indira Gabriel, recently abandoned by her lover, Solomon, embarks on a project to reinvigorate a dilapidated bar into something special. In this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins draws together a richly-drawn cast of characters, like a Trinidadian Cheers.
Meet Bostic, Solomon’s boyhood friend, who is determined to keep the bar as a shrine; I Cynthia, the tale-telling Belmont maco ; KarlLee, the painter with a very complicated love-life; fatherless Jah-Son; and Fritzie, single mum and Indira’s loyal right-hand woman. At the book’s centre is the unforgettable Indira, with her ebullience and sadness, her sharpness and honesty, obsession with the daily horoscope and addiction to increasingly absurd self-help books.
In this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins hears, like Sam Selvon, the melancholy behind “the kiff-kiff laughter”, as darkness from Indira’s past threatens her drive to make a new beginning.
Barbara Jenkins was born in Trinidad. She began writing in her seventies, and is the author of a novel, a collection of short stories and now a memoir, The Stranger Who Was Myself. She has won awards including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Caribbean Region), the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The Canute Brodhurst Prize, the Small Axe short story competition, My African Diaspora Short Story Contest and a Guyana Prize for Literature.
