A few posts ago, inspired by the observations on a tree by Buxton Spice's narrator, I recalled a childhood "tree" story of my own. And some commenters helped put the story in adult "narrative" perspective by calling it the story of a wicked child, the story of a good grandmother's headache, and the story of an evil big sister. They were all correct of course. But that's not the point here.
Their attempts to put adult perspectives on a childhood story are typical of the way many of us think. We tend to want to give our childhood perspectives shape or completeness by putting our adult perspective on them. I must say here though that one commenter appeared to see the incident through the child's eyes, showing her empathy with these words:
Shees, granny was one tough cookie! I was a wicked big sister too but I never went as far as tying my lil sister to a chair, darn, I wish I had thought of that, hahaha. I must email her to tell her.
(hahaha!)
I can only imagine the effort of restraining the adult perspective for the writer who seeks to write in the voice of a child, focusing solely on that child's perspective. It must be quite a struggle for the adult writer. Buxton Spice's child narrator gives credible voice to the wonderment and discovery of girlish childhood, as I noted here previously. But, when the novel shifts focus to more adult themes--politics, ethnic divides--it demonstrates (deliberately or not) why we can't always depend on a child's perspective for a reliable picture, and why the adult perspective must intervene at times. And, it also demonstrates how uncomfortable the two voices--that of child and adult--are together.
In one episode, the child narrator in observing a visit to the village from Guyana's president (at the time) Forbes Burnham, notes his "Well-off African Politician look--grey-blue shirtjack over his paunch, black shoes glittering, gold band on his wrist..." Question: does this assessment of his look sound like that of a child's? If she had been described as a child who had travelled to African countries, then maybe the assessment would be understood to be that of a precocious, knowledgeable child's. But she is not described as a world-traveller in the novel, and as such the assessment can only be seen as that of the adult writer's. The description of Burnham gives the reader fuller, more pointed insight to the times in which the events in the novel take place in a way that a child's perspective can't.
Another potentially puzzling "voice" moment in the novel is when we get commentary on the differences between Black and Indian villages. For this reader, the differences are too generalized to be an accurate depiction of how Indians and Blacks live (or lived). And once again I wonder whose voice we're getting here. Unlike the case with the description of Burnham however, it's not so clear if the voice is that of a young "too-general" narrator, or the pointed one of the adult writer. At the least, it's an odd, uncomfortable moment in an otherwise smooth-flowing narrative.
Buxton Spice has been mostly well-received by critics, deeming it a successful first novel. And so I'll wrap up with two of the most-discussed areas of the novel. The first is its erotica, which I enjoyed immensely. It is both innocent and wicked, and by far the most believable depiction of coming-of-age sexual awareness that I have ever read.
The second most discussed area of the novel is its narrative style. There is no narrative plot, what we get instead is a series of episodes. I wrote my tree story to show (to some degree) how faded memory can be crafted into the story form with a beginning, middle, and end. Because it has no particluar plot, Buxton Spice does not conform to the crafting of memory into a continuous story. Its lack of a plot has been a problematic area for some critcs who probably expected the true novel form (the true long story). I had no problem with the narrative style; I felt the episodes became a full, complete story of pre-teen awakening.
One reviewer concluded:
"Buxton Spice is a promising debut. It remains to be seen whether Kempadoo will find themes wider than her childhood memories, but she's made a flying start."
I concur, because I imagine that focusing on adult themes would resolve any potential problem arising from an editorial adult voice in a child's world--a minor problem in Buxton Spice, but one with negative repercussions that left a slightly sour after-taste.
[Oonya Kempadoo has also written Tide Running. Read a review and interview with the author here.]
