Staff Pick
An elegant story of poverty vs. wealth, black vs. white, and violence vs. peace, Augustown is a beautiful read. Miller's book traces the entwined stories of Ma Taffy, her daughter Gina, and Gina's son Kaia, along with the local schoolteacher and principal, and a neighborhood of both upstanding and unsavory characters in this tiny Jamaican town. An unfortunate act of hate leads to a cataclysm the likes of which the town has never seen. Miller's poetic prose captures his female characters so perfectly that throughout the entire book I thought Miller was a woman. Deeply emotional, Augustown will dazzle. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In the wake of Marlon James's Man Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, Augustown--set in the backlands of Jamaica--is a magical and haunting novel of one woman's struggle to rise above the brutal vicissitudes of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth.
Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do. For the story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life.
Synopsis
11 April 1982: a smell is coming down John Golding Road right alongside the boy-child, something attached to him, like a spirit but not quite. Ma Taffy is growing worried. She knows that something is going to happen. Something terrible is going to pour out into the world. But if she can hold it off for just a little bit longer, she will. So she asks a question that surprises herself even as she asks it, -Kaia, I ever tell you bout the flying preacherman?-
Set in the backlands of Jamaica, Augustown is a magical and haunting novel of one woman's struggle to rise above the brutal vicissitudes of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth.
Kei Miller on PowellsBooks.Blog
In those days, we all wanted one. They were markers of class and achievement and modernity. It was desperate, that need in us to be modern. Maybe it was just another thing we had inherited from England — even from the Victorians. Right after the Mother Country had introduced the locomotive train to the world, there was Jamaica first in line...
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