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In Kingston, Jamaica, Pumkin lives with her chilly mother, her judgmental grandmother, and her Aunt Sophie whom she loves. Sophie moves to France with long-range plans to send for Pumkin, but meanwhile Pumpkin must live through the ever-present tensions that fill the little house the three women share. She’s a reader, has learned French, is constantly criticized for putting on airs, and suffers setback after setback. What saves her is her cooking skill and her generous spirit. The irony: when she finally gets to France to join Sophie, after a few years she realizes her heart belongs in her homeland and she returns to Jamaica to make a good life for herself. Recipe for a good book: the food sounds delicious, the vernacular patois is tasty, and the story is lively and tender.
In this apocalyptic fable, two old sisters in the middle of nowhere have their routines. Practical Evelyn tends the extensive garden, Lily practices her dance steps in secret, but both are failing. They live in a small section of the huge house they grew up in and they consider the rest off limits, full of possible menace. From the mysterious region beyond their crumbling stone walls comes a boy. Is he friend or foe? It’s a rocky beginning for the three of them but they come to accept his presence and his help. He and Lily form a special bond and finally leave for the outside world together. In a final chapter, Evelyn receives a visitor, a man with a little daughter named Lily, bearing flowers. Is this just a tender hallucination to see her out? The whole book has a dreamlike atmosphere, but the sensory details are so specific that I suspended disbelief and got caught up in its haunting spell.
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