Sugar Money
Jane Harris
£14.99
Mr B's review
This hugely tense, moving story throws you deep into the 18C rustling plantations of a moonlit Caribbean island as two young slave brothers are given the near impossible mission of crossing to a neighbouring island to smuggle out fellow slaves. The beauty lies in the unusual vernacular, the incredible feeling of suspense and the brilliantly drawn evolving relationship between the brothers – young, naïve, excitable Lucien and world-weary Emile, who knows a rock and a hard place when he sees them.
Description
The stunning return from the Orange Prize shortlisted author of The Observations and Gillespie and I
‘Pitches you headfirst into this outstanding, heartbreaking story of siblings, slavery and the savagery of the colonial past.’ SUNDAY EXPRESS
‘Harris builds a lush sense of place, and the pace and tension of a rip-roaring adventure here, with derring-do and double-crossing.’ THE TIMES
‘Through masterful detail, Harris shows the dehumanisation of the brothers and their fellow slaves . . . Beautifully cadenced.’ IRISH TIMES
Martinique, 1765, and brothers Emile and Lucien are charged by their French master, Father Cleophas, with a mission. They must return to Grenada, the island they once called home, and smuggle back the 42 slaves claimed by English invaders at the hospital plantation in Fort Royal. While Lucien, barely in his teens, sees the trip as a great adventure, the older and worldlier Emile has no illusions about the dangers they will face. But with no choice other than to obey Cleophas – and sensing the possibility, however remote, of finding his first love Celeste – he sets out with his brother on this ‘reckless venture’.
With great characters, a superb narrative set up, and language that is witty and thrillingly alive, Sugar Money is a novel to treasure.
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