The Mermaid of Black Conch: The spellbinding winner of the Costa Book of the Year as read on BBC Radio 4

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Deservedly 2020's most heralded novel - Winner of the Costa Prize for Best Book and for Best Novel, Goldsmiths Prize shortlisted, shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, shortlisted for the Novel section of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction but there are still a few people round St Constance who remember him as a young man and his part in the events in 1976, when those white men from Florida came to fish for marlin and instead pulled a mermaid out of the sea What an epic well thought out love story with a realistic Caribbean twist. A Mermaid caught off the coast of a Caribbean island and she ends up falling in love with a lowly fisherman… I WANT MORE! I read this story in one day because it just had to know what became of these lovers. The writing was well executed, and the pacing perfect for the kind of story that was being told. We had history, folklore, power dynamics, and such tender moments all interspersed throughout the novel.

This may be a novel about a mermaid but it's definitely not a Disney tale. At the centre of this story is the destructive effects of female jealousy, the dizzying impact of heartfelt passion and the deleterious legacy of colonialism on a fictional Caribbean island. Monique Roffey is a writer whose work I enthusiastically follow because her books are so varied and creative. The three I've read previously “The White Woman on the Green Bicycle”, “House of Ashes” and “The Tryst” each use inventive stories to approach different social, political and emotional subject matter. I was also inspired to read this new novel since I've joined in #Caribathon, an online readathon of Caribbean literature. So much of the substance of this book is lightly summarised in this quotation: the Caribbean setting, St Constance which is invented and yet feels real, the importance of memory and the perpetual weight of history, manhood and what it might mean, 'those white men' (though they're interestingly divided as the story progresses), fishing and related ecological issues... and the mermaid who is pulled up as if she, too, were a marlin, captured for sport and a trophy of a certain type of manliness. Since we started this podcast, I’ve been able to find so much literature written by Caribbean authors, and it made me realize that the thing I had been seeking all along has always been out there, like right under my nose, right? And that perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough, or perhaps the past couple of years, and technology, and the impetus of doing this podcast have increased exposure. So, I know I have loved being able to incorporate fiction from various Caribbean perspectives into my library, and what grabbed me about this book is that it’s a love story centered on a mythical creature — a mermaid — that weaves in the complex story and history of the Caribbean and the resultant impact of colonization, but without centering on it.Once I had started it . . . I couldn’t stop. It was quite unlike anything I’d ever read. Such brilliant mythmaking; such powerful storytelling. The account of the mermaid’s capture was agonising to read – a feminist reframing of all those Great American Novels about men and the sea. Monique Roffey managed to say so much about society’s treatment of difference, enslavement, exploitation of the natural world, sexual politics, but without ever sermonising or compromising the storytelling.” —Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures And in this other interview with the New Statesman, Roffey also talked about the hybrid form of the novel — where an omniscient narrator appears alongside Aycayia’s verses and David’s journal entries. She says: On one hand, it can feel discouraging, the amount of work — largely uncompensated “labors of love” — that writers of color and small or independent publishers like Peepal Tree Press have to do to get their work out there. But clearly, the readership is there. And I just love Roffey’s excitement about the contemporary Caribbean and diasporic writing scene, which you kind of talked about too in discovering all these writers. In one of her interviews with Advantages of Age, she says: What makes the novel sing is how Roffey fleshes out these mythical goings-on with pin-sharp detail from the real world, as Aycayia, hidden away in David’s bedroom, navigates the perils (and pleasures) of life on land. After her tail rots, she relearns to walk in an old pair of David’s green suede Adidas. Her nostrils bleed “all kind of molluscs and tiny crabs”. David worries that the smell and the noise of her wordless song might attract nosy neighbours, not least Priscilla, whose mean-spirited meddling injects a dose of malevolent comic energy into the action. This book is a hugely poignant novel I’d certainly recommend, and is as subtly informative as it is fantastical.

What makes the novel sing is how Roffey fleshes out mythical goings-on with pin-sharp detail from the real world." - The Observer Old woman, pretty woman, both rejects. Womanhood was a dangerous business if you didn’t get it right. But when the annual fishing competition takes place on the island, attracting entrants from all over the Caribbean and further afield, including a father and son from Florida, David accidentally leads them in her direction, and they capture Aycayia, after an epic (and wonderfully portrayed) struggle. As they celebrate in the local rum shop, David finds Aycayia hanging from a fish hook, cuts her down and takes her to his house. Although it’s funny — I have to say that when I didn’t know anything about the book except for its title, I was a little skeptical that it would be something I’d enjoy. But then I saw the cover art by artist Harriet Shillito for the Peepal Tree edition. And so, it depicts how the Taino mermaid named Aycayia is described in the story: “something ancient … the face of a human woman who once lived centuries past”; “her tail … yards and yards of musty silver … She must weigh four or five hundred pounds”; her tattoos “looked like spirals, and the spirals looked like the moon and the sun,” she must have been “a woman from the tribes that lived in these islands when everything was still a garden.”It’s really not as simple as that, Roffey points out: “I think if you unravel female jealousy, you find the patriarchy. It’s a competition for the alpha male, and we’ve ever been thus. Our patriarchy is highly internalised.” It’s hard if you’re a pale-skinned Caribbean writer to say what you think, for fear of being orphaned by your own kind In the dead of night, under a full and waxing moon... Oh, goody: it's already full but about to get even bigger. T: Interesting about Potiki, because in an article for The Guardian, Patricia Grace noted that in the criticisms she received on Potiki at the time, and I’ll just read a bit of it:

Race also plays a role in the story. Most of the characters in the book are conscious of The Caribbean’s history of colonisers. At one point David Baptiste regrets that his surname is a French one. The only major white character, Arcadia Rain (the Americans only make brief appearances in the beginning and end) is more like her Caribbean neighbors as she speaks the dialect. Coming from an island that has been under many different occupations, I was able to relate to this aspect of the book. David was strumming his guitar and singing to himself when she first raised her barnacled, seaweed-clotted head from the flat, grey sea, its stark hues of turquoise not yet stirred. Plain so, the mermaid popped up and watched him for some time before he glanced around and caught sight of her.

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A story that’s evocative and reminiscent of oral storytelling traditions . . . Written partly in a beautiful rhythmic, lilting patois that creates a bold vision, it’s easy to find yourself deeply immersed in Roffey’s world, in a narrative that shows us how magic realism is oftentimes the best, most appropriate genre for post colonial fiction.” —Mahvesh Murad, Tor.com One result of that internalisation has been the “madwoman in the attic trope”, which was transported into Caribbean literature by Jean Rhys via her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which reinvents the first Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre as a white Creole. “I think we’ve had enough of this historic, hysterical Freudian woman,” says Roffey. “I have every respect for Rhys, but we need new, different types of characters coming out of the region. One can’t help admiring the boldness of Roffey’s vision. . . . Sentence by sensuous sentence, Roffey builds a verdant, complicated world that is a pleasure to live inside. . . . Aycayia is a magical creature, though rendered so physically you might start to believe in the existence of mermaids.” —Shruti Swamy, The New York Times

So, what about you? How did you hear about the book, and what made you want to read it and recommend it for the podcast? Sentence by sensuous sentence, Roffey builds a verdant, complicated world that is a pleasure to live inside…. You might start to believe in the existence of mermaids.”— The New York Times It has been a hugely affirming experience to make a contribution to this newly emerging contemporary cannon. I recently attended The Bocas Litfest in Trinidad and got to meet many of my peers, writers and poets from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, and elsewhere … we all got to lay eyes on each other. There is a boom in writing coming from the Caribbean region and I’m part of it. It feels like a new era.In a stunning fusion of story and voice, this is told in a lyrical manner which uses Caribbean cadences and rhythm alongside Aycayia's free verse narrative, foregrounding language as one of the contested issues here: the 'standard' harsh American of the men from Florida contrasted with variations of accent and communications from sign language to singing. I listened to the audiobook and benefited from the authentic reading - I don't think this is a book which should be read in 'received pronunciation' English! Now shortlisted (the fabulous) 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize as well as winner of the (rather better known) 2020 Costa Book of The Year prize and previously shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize and 2021 Folio Prize. David, in his mid 20s, is a fisherman, who plays his guitar while he waits in the sea for a bite, and finds he has attracted the attention of a mermaid, who swims near to his boat, although the two don’t directly interact. A beautifully, subtly written tale of an ancient woman, Aycayia, cursed to be a mermaid, captured in a fishing competition by white USA men then rescued by David Baptiste, a local fisherman who falls in love with her.