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The Pirate's Daughter by our own Ms Margaret ,with pictures and all...haven't seen it yet miself but i got the info from the horse's mouth [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/notworthy.gif[/img]
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Re: People mag wid Queen Latifah has an article on
By Amy Alexander,
whose reviews appear monthly in Style
Washington Post
Tuesday, October 16, 2007; Page C07
THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER
By Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Unbridled. 394 pp. $24.95
Weep not for May Josephine Flynn.
In Margaret Cezair-Thompson's engaging novel, May endures a galleon's worth of troubles, including tangled intrigue among louche, expatriate Brits, a home invasion by drug-addled thugs and the crude observations of a bisexual Frenchman who can't resist her resemblance to Errol Flynn, May's wayward, movie star father.
May comes through sad but wiser, poised to thrive on the north coast of Jamaica, the ancestral island home of her beautiful mother, Ida, and the adopted refuge of the scalawag Flynn.
Cezair-Thompson, author of "The True History of Paradise" and a creative writing instructor at Wellesley College, brings a smart, lilting voice and a sharp, quirky perspective to a tried-and-true literary formula, the sweeping historical epic. By taking the classic question familiar to all storytellers -- "What if?" -- and marrying it to the classic advice of fiction-writing teachers -- "Write what you know" -- Cezair-Thompson unravels a surprising yarn that is rich, salty and ultimately satisfying.
What if Flynn had fathered a Jamaican child during his years on the West Indian island? And what if that daughter decided to write a pirate story that draws on her life among treasure hunters, restless ghosts, proper Jamaican ladies and randy old Englishmen?
Cezair-Thompson convincingly threads May's pirate tale, dubbed "Treasure Cove," throughout the novel, with passages that sound as if they were scratched out by Anne Bonny or any other notorious buccaneers who trafficked the Caribbean in the 18th century.
"I shall now proceed to furnish you with the details of my misfortunes as they occurred with no exaggeration," writes May in "Treasure Cove." But as the multi-generational drama of "The Pirate's Daughter" sails along, her own life ultimately outstrips any imagined tales of pirate peril and derring-do.
As a Jamaican, Cezair-Thompson grew up hearing elders reminisce about Flynn and other white film stars and British and German expats who kept homes on Jamaica. It was said that Flynn -- upon his first arrival in 1946 at the tiny northern province of Port Antonio -- was so handsome that "fainting became epidemic among the young women of the island whenever they glimpsed" him, she writes.
The swashbuckling star of dozens of Hollywood films -- including the pirate blockbusters "The Sea Hawk" and "Captain Blood" -- Flynn had stumbled into acting after a misspent youth. In "The Pirate's Daughter," he quickly cuts a wide swath across Port Antonio. Enlisting the help of Eli Joseph, the taxi driver who picks him up after his yacht wrecks outside the harbor, Flynn decides to build a home on a nearby mini-island of wide beaches and clear streams.
As the Mediterranean-style estate takes shape, Flynn is revealed to be a complicated, exasperating fellow: rum-loving and freewheeling as he charms his way into Joseph's circle of family and friends. But he is also oblivious, selfish and heartless, racking up debt and impregnating the Jamaican man's 16-year-old daughter, Ida.
Flynn also conquers a bevy of actresses and female tourists, marries, divorces and marries again, all while continuously fretting over two statutory rape charges he had narrowly slipped out of in the United States. He is soon joined in Port Antonio by an old friend, the mysterious Baron Karl Von Ausberg, who will come to loom large in the lives of Ida and May.
Set in the golden years between the end of World War II and the onset of the political and economic upheavals that began under Prime Minister Michael Manley in the 1970s, "The Pirate's Daughter" sparkles with characters real and imagined: Flynn dominates the first half of the story, and is fleetingly joined by the likes of Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. They all are rendered in vivid, three-dimensional portrayals, effortlessly fleshed out to such a degree that I found myself casting the imagined characters as long-gone Hollywood actors: Fredric March as Nigel Fletcher, the British novelist who befriends Ida and her family; Claire Trevor as Denise Fletcher, Nigel's crass, whiskey-swilling wife; and the burly, inscrutable Walter Slezak as Baron Von Ausberg.
Matters of race and class are weighty but presented here without commentary. Several scenes involving near-rapes, date rapes and grown men seducing young teens are stomach-turning in their intensity. But Cezair-Thompson allows her characters to work through -- or not -- the larger social and political implications of such violence. Likewise, discussions and descriptions of how Jamaica's formerly efficient, relatively harmonious economic landscape devolved over time into one of vast inequality and hardship are layered into the last third of the story with seamless power.
Beyond the Hollywood stardust that floats over the proceedings, it is Cezair-Thompson's deft evocation of the beauty and unpredictability of Jamaica, its topography and its people, that raises "The Pirate's Daughter" to a level far above the bodice-ripping historic epic. -
Re: People mag wid Queen Latifah has an article on
so mi goat go look pon it...it is the 'critic's pick' an dere is a picture of Margaret also.... [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70458-applaud.gif[/img]Comment
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Re: People mag wid Queen Latifah has an article on
[img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/mad2.gif[/img] I picked it up in Target but the line was too short I didn't get to see her. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/mad2.gif[/img]Comment
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Re: People mag wid Queen Latifah has an article on
mi go up a mi carna B n N tonite go ask fi di book...an mi mek sure seh it was placed front an centa...di good news is dat juss three copies leff... [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/bannana_purple.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/bannana_purple.gif[/img]Comment
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rave reviews for The Pirate's Daughter
Cezair-Thompson has spun a book-club-ready saga with two gorgeous women at its center--Ida, a light-skinned local girl who has a tryst with Flynn, and May, the daughter of that brief union. Flynn never acknowledges paternity, leaving Ida and May to forge a place for themselves in a land where they belong to neither the wealthy class of expatriates, nor the emerging black majority…[the book has] a knockout ending that reveals treasure buried beneath sand-encrusted secrets.”—People Magazine, Critic’s Choice
“With just enough swagger left in him to set island hearts aflutter, [Flynn] embarks on an affair with a young mixed-race girl coming of age, which, set against Jamaica’s own progression toward self-governance, makes for an unabashedly frangipani-scented—and wholly satisfying—armchair holiday of a read.”
—Vogue
“The novel never stops for breath once…[it] just buzzes along, with years flying by between chapters, and dozens of characters entering and exiting, saying interesting things and doing outrageous ones. These characters range from aristocratic Europeans to desperately poor Jamaicans, and they are constantly pairing off in the most surprising ways.”—O Magazine
“[Cezair-Thompson] explores questions about identity and racism without being heavy-handed about it. She's best at juxtaposing Flynn's imported glamour with the realities of Jamaica and at suggesting there's more than one kind of buried treasure…The Pirate's Daughter offers plenty of serious passion and escape.”—USA Today
“Cezair-Thompson…brings a smart, lilting voice and a sharp, quirky perspective to a tried-and-true literary formula, the sweeping historical epic…. unravels a surprising yarn that is rich, salty and ultimately satisfying…[It’s her] deft evocation of the beauty and unpredictability of Jamaica, its topography and its people, that raises "The Pirate's Daughter" to a level far above the bodice-ripping historic epic.”—The Washington Post
"Cezair-Thompson promises her readers a "tropical adventure." She evokes spectacular shipwrecks and deserted islands, infamous buccaneers and glamorous celebrities. And the story that follows makes good on these promises. The novel fictionalizes an episode in the life of Errol Flynn, the scandal plagued, womanizing movie star whose sailboat capsized off the coast of Jamaica during a hurricane in 1946. Beginning with this very real drama, Cezair-Thompson tells the tale of two imagined women: a beautiful Jamaican teenager Flynn seduces during his time on the island and the daughter she bears him but whom he never cares to know.”—The New York Times Book ReviewComment
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Re: rave reviews for The Pirate's Daughter
Ah Flyn the self confessed slave trader....Comment
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