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The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
A beautifully written, unforgettable novel of a troubled marriage, set against the lush landscape and political turmoil of Trinidad—by the award-winning author of The Mermaid of Black ConchMonique Roffey's Orange Prize-shortlisted novel is a gripping portrait of postcolonialism that stands among great works by Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Andrea Levy. When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease. As they adapt to new circumstances, their marriage endures for better or worse, despite growing political unrest and racial tensions that affect their daily lives. But when George finds a cache of letters that Sabine has hidden from him, the discovery sets off a devastating series of consequences as other secrets begin to emerge.
437 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
124 people are currently reading
3480 people want to read
About the author
Monique Roffey
14 books450 followersMonique Roffey, FRSL, is an award winning British-Trinidadian writer. Her most recent novel, Passiontide, (Harvill, 2024), a crime thriller and protest novel, was a finalist for the prestigious US Caricon Award.
The Mermaid of Black Conch (Peepal Tree Press/Vintage) won the Costa Book of the Year Award, 2020 and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, 2020, the Rathbones/Folio Award 2021, and the Republic of Consciousness Award. Her other novels have been shortlisted for The Orange Prize, Costa Novel Award, Encore and Orion Awards. In 2013, Archipelago won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The Mermaid of Black Conch (Peepal Tree Press/Vintage) won the Costa Book of the Year Award, 2020 and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, 2020, the Rathbones/Folio Award 2021, and the Republic of Consciousness Award. Her other novels have been shortlisted for The Orange Prize, Costa Novel Award, Encore and Orion Awards. In 2013, Archipelago won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 508 reviews
August 8, 2011
It frightens me that this novel could be nominated for an internationally recognized literary award. I have given it two stars only for its offering of a rare snapshot of Trinidadian daily life before 1990. This snapshot however is on a purely superficial level, with fantastic imagery but nearly juvenile insight. Not only does it present a completely false and warped idea of race relations on the island, but it does so in a very self-indulgent manner, as if to justify racism and colonial attitudes on the island. Only some of the main character Sabine's flaws are intentional, the rest signify prejudiced attitudes and ideas that to this date have not been resolved by post-emancipation white settlers or their descendants. Roffey's understanding of the problems that lurk within the social fabric of Trinidad is amateur at best, and certainly no basis upon which she should have attempted such a complex novel. In failing to detail the true roots and implications of these social issues, she has written a novel which condescends to the majority of the population of one of the Caribbean's richest islands. I found myself continuously frustrated with her false explanations for people's behavior and her misguided understanding of problems that most high school students might better explain. Furthermore, she made several exaggerations in order to fit her purpose (ex. the blimp's presence in Port of Spain) which could be reasonably considered artistic license had she not then made it such a central motif of what was supposed to be a candid study of the island. The way she depicted the Trinidadian accent was relatively accurate in certain cases, but then ruined by being used by every kind of Trinidadian, from the Harwood's housekeeper to their white upper middle class children to Prime Minister Manning. This was simply another example of how clueless Roffey seems to be about Trinidad.
I don't mean this review to be insulting to the author, as one can tell she has put a great deal of effort into the structure and actual writing of this book. I simply feel that perhaps her skills as a writer might be better put to use in a novel about a place she understands better. This novel makes her seem as ignorant as her main character, and the two should be very separate if we are meant to empathize at all with the ever-complaining Sabine.
To be fair to readers unfamiliar with Trinidad, this might have been a wonderful book about another place, where Roffey's insight held any truth or value. But as a Trinidadian citizen, especially one of African descent, I found it offensive and void of any serious literary value as a piece of accurate historical fiction.
I don't mean this review to be insulting to the author, as one can tell she has put a great deal of effort into the structure and actual writing of this book. I simply feel that perhaps her skills as a writer might be better put to use in a novel about a place she understands better. This novel makes her seem as ignorant as her main character, and the two should be very separate if we are meant to empathize at all with the ever-complaining Sabine.
To be fair to readers unfamiliar with Trinidad, this might have been a wonderful book about another place, where Roffey's insight held any truth or value. But as a Trinidadian citizen, especially one of African descent, I found it offensive and void of any serious literary value as a piece of accurate historical fiction.
March 16, 2024
After reading Roffey's novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch I knew I needed to read more of her books.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle 🚲 tells the story of married couple, George and Sabine Harwood, spanning 50 years in Trinidad. The book begins in 2006 when Sabine is now in her 70s, reflecting on their time living in Trinidad and all of the troubles the place has brought to their marriage.
George and Sabine, initially from England, decide to move to Trinidad for a contract job George was offered. It was supposed to be a three-month commitment but turned into fifty years. Sabine began to feel that George was more in love with Trinidad than he was with her.
The green woman (Trinidad), her lush, rounded curves bucking and jolting. She could never compete, never win her husband's heart back from this bewitching country, not now.
About midway through the book, the timeline jumps backwards to 1956, when Sabine and George first arrived in Trinidad as twenty-five-year-old newlyweds.
George had brought me to Trinidad, all the way across the Atlantic Sea. He'd talked me into it, into him accepting a nondescript clerical job in a faraway country I'd thought was India, at first.
George began to change the longer he stayed in Trinidad and became more distant to Sabine.
George changed. Gradually, over the weeks and months after arriving in Trinidad, I noticed a difference. He stared up at the hills more and more.
I saw what George saw and knew finally that I had competition.
When they arrived on the island, Sabine's only mode of transportation was her green bicycle that she brought over from England.
The White Woman on the green bicycle!
Everyone wants to know who you are. You've been causing a commotion. We've all been dying to know your identity.
As Sabine and George's marriage wavers, she becomes obsessed with the new prime minister, Eric Williams. When George finds shoeboxes of letters written to Williams from Sabine one day, he finally begins to reflect on his life choices and decides to win his wife back.
------------------‐------------------------------------------------------
I love this story. I learned so much about Trinidad and its culture. I now have a new word in my vocabulary:
Steupsed: Caribbean/Jamaica dialect meaning to suck one's teeth, indicating disappointment, derision, or disgust.
This phrase was used so much during the book, I had to look it up. 😁
They sucked their teeth when cross.
Overall, fantastic read. 👏
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle 🚲 tells the story of married couple, George and Sabine Harwood, spanning 50 years in Trinidad. The book begins in 2006 when Sabine is now in her 70s, reflecting on their time living in Trinidad and all of the troubles the place has brought to their marriage.
George and Sabine, initially from England, decide to move to Trinidad for a contract job George was offered. It was supposed to be a three-month commitment but turned into fifty years. Sabine began to feel that George was more in love with Trinidad than he was with her.
The green woman (Trinidad), her lush, rounded curves bucking and jolting. She could never compete, never win her husband's heart back from this bewitching country, not now.
About midway through the book, the timeline jumps backwards to 1956, when Sabine and George first arrived in Trinidad as twenty-five-year-old newlyweds.
George had brought me to Trinidad, all the way across the Atlantic Sea. He'd talked me into it, into him accepting a nondescript clerical job in a faraway country I'd thought was India, at first.
George began to change the longer he stayed in Trinidad and became more distant to Sabine.
George changed. Gradually, over the weeks and months after arriving in Trinidad, I noticed a difference. He stared up at the hills more and more.
I saw what George saw and knew finally that I had competition.
When they arrived on the island, Sabine's only mode of transportation was her green bicycle that she brought over from England.
The White Woman on the green bicycle!
Everyone wants to know who you are. You've been causing a commotion. We've all been dying to know your identity.
As Sabine and George's marriage wavers, she becomes obsessed with the new prime minister, Eric Williams. When George finds shoeboxes of letters written to Williams from Sabine one day, he finally begins to reflect on his life choices and decides to win his wife back.
------------------‐------------------------------------------------------
I love this story. I learned so much about Trinidad and its culture. I now have a new word in my vocabulary:
Steupsed: Caribbean/Jamaica dialect meaning to suck one's teeth, indicating disappointment, derision, or disgust.
This phrase was used so much during the book, I had to look it up. 😁
They sucked their teeth when cross.
Overall, fantastic read. 👏
May 13, 2011
NO SPOILERS!!!
I finished this book last night, before I went to bed, but it is still night or early, early morning. 3:30 AM to be precise! I cannot sleep. I keep thinking abut this book and how I shhould explain why I adore it. It swallowed me, sucked on me, swished me around, pounded me and then spit me out. Or have you ever been tumbled and beaten by a crashing wave? When you escape, thrown up on shore, dizzy, without footing, tousled, pummelled; that is another way of describing how you feel after reading this book. Chrissie, this is not helping..... be specific! Explain! How?! Where do I begin?
I will begin by saying you feel physically beaten and brutalized by this book. Well, I did. The land, the people, the pounding heat, the fruit that fall down on on your head, the insects that attack, the earth that rumbles and moves so you are shaken. You physically feel this book. With the author's words you feel life on the island of Trinidad. I cannot explain it better than that. And you feel the youth and sexual attraction of Sabine when she arrives, when she is atop that green bicycle pedalling all over the island, scared of NOTHING! She is too busy to be scared, There is not an ouce of fear even in situations where perhaps she should have been frightened. She is so alive and beautidul and sexy atop that bicycle. Everyone noticed her. Cars almost collided. And you see her when she is in her seventies, old and beaten by the sun and all the other forces of this island. This book is sensual. When a couple cannot talk, cannot communicate, they use sex to pound each other; it is the only means left to reach out to the other.
Mentally this book puts you in a turmoil too. This book is historical fiction. You get the history of Trinidad from the 1950s through to 2007. The history isn't on the edge of the stroy but it IS the story. The whole story. It is the central theme. You cannot close the covers of this book and not understand what happened there in Trinidad during this time period. Such is impossible. A central theme of all this is colonialism. Europeans sucking the sap out of this West Indian island. It is about the love/hate feelings between the black Africans, the French Creole aristocracy and the Europeans. I have lived in different countries. I know what is is like to be plunked down in a culture that you do not understand. How do you feel when you arive and when you have been there for years? Sabine and her husband George arrived with completely different intentions. Sabine didn't really want to come. This made me feel cold toward her. But which of the two let the island's culture suck them in more? That is an interesting question? I also understand the turmoil Sabine felt because she didn't agree with her husband about the basics; how long would they stay or what was the purpose of their stay on the island?! I actually came to fully understand Sabine. I joined her side, but hej you do not understand where she really stood until you read this book. Read this book. It is marvellous.
I feel like removing stars from all the books I have recently read so that when I give this five stars you will see how this book sparkles and is illuminated by the five stars. I do not think this book will fit everybody. It fit me perfectly. Are you interested in how it feels to be a foreigner in a new country? Are you interested in history? Do you want an emotional ride? Do you enjoy the excerpts given below? Those are the suestions you should ask yourself when you decide whether you want to read this book! If you answer yes, then read this book.
********************************************************
49% percent through the book:
I absolutely love the book. the more I read,the more it pulls me in. I absolutely adore how it describes Trinidad and those living there. The plot line goes backwards. You start in 2006, but then when you know these people and care for them, when you NEED to know more, that is when the author dips into the past. It is the writing style that draws you in.
You all know that I am not interested in cuisine or cooking. Me, I cook as quickly as I can. But this suthor entices me with the Trinidadian cuisine:
It was Venus who got me cooking. She introduced George and me to creole cuisine, which she called blue food: sweet potatoe, eddoes, cassava, yams.
'Good old-fashioned stodge,'George called it.
Venus brewed up drinks, too - a red cordial a bit like cranberry juice: sorrel. Another from the bark of a tree: mauby, a green liquorice-type medicine we choked back. In months, our diets had changed for ever. Venus devised our menus. Instead of reading the cookbook, I hung around the kitchen.
'What are you doing?' I asked, peering over her shoulder. She was stripping down the stalks of some large leaves.
'It's dasheen bush.'
'What's that?'
'For callaloo.'
'Can't you just chop them up and put them in the soup?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'You hadda take out dis vein furs.'
'Why?'
'It trouble de throat. Make it itch. Her eyes shone. I stared. Venus nodded and smiled, suppressing her amusement. (at 49%)
Just as how the plot goes backwards in time so you want to know when it is finally presented to you, the same is true here. Callaloo has been mentioned many times. I have been asking myself: What IS that? Now I know. I also finally found out what steupsed means. Wikipedia didn't help me. Always the author makes us want to know before we are told! Finally, I know why Sabine speaks French and why the people in this former British colony revert to French. I am only told when I find myself going crazy with curiosity.
I SAID I wouldn't give any more excerpts, but yes, I just broke down. I simply had too. NOW NO MORE EXCERPTS, no matter how wonderful the lines are. I think this book will get five stars. I cannot believe I have half left. What is going to happen next?!
*****************************************************
32% through the book:
I love how everything is described - the people, the places, the feel of Trinidad. I knew nothing about Trinidad, but know I feel I am there. One more excerpt and that will just have to do. Here we are at the World Cup football match between the Soca Warriors of Trinidad and the opposing Peruvians:
Everyone wore red. Flags hung from shoulders, faces were painted with the Trinidad and Tobago colours. Conch horns bellowed. Vendors greeted ticket holders well in advance of the entrance, hawking writstbands, T-shirts, whistles, car stickers. George and Clock dodged them, drifting up the main corridor towards the stadium entrance, stopping to buy cherry-flavoured snow cones. Four in the afternoon and the sun poured down. They climbed the stairs to the balconies, arriving at the top, gazing out onto the scratchy yellos-grass pitch....
George and Clock made their way down an aisle and across a row of seats. George opened his giant golf umbrella and they sat under it eating their melting snow cones and warm peanuts, watching a fat man dressed in a red satin suit and red cowboy hat goose-stepping around the pitch. (at 32%)
The writing is vividly colored. You hear a cacophony of voices, shrill cries, whistles and the reader is right there in that stadium under the glaring sun. I love it.
*************************************************
21% through the book:
So the bicycle it is found again, There it is: clean and sparkling and repaired. All had their own memories tied to this bike. Memories of Sabine on this bike. Memories of a person who had been! The faces looked on expectantly when the bike was put before Sabine again:
La Pompey (the handyman) laughed. 'Yeah, man. Try it, nuh.'
Jennifer (the maid) cackled, blushing through her black skin. 'Mrs Harwood, give it a try, nuh. I cyan believe you ride it once.'
Everyone turned to look at Sabine.
Sabine backed away, holding onto her dog. 'Are you crazy? Jennifer give it to Chantal.'
'How she go ride it up dat hill?' Jennifer retorted.
Sabine looked at George: he was blushing, heat in his face. Was he hurt?
'Well, give it away to your friend who runs the charity shop at the church. Take it away. I can't believe we still have it lying around. Give it away, for God's sake.'
Sabine looked at their expectant faces, all of a sudden crowdedin.
Memories flooded up. Eric Williams in his flashy American car, sailing past. The look he gave her, through the windo, questions in his eyes. She felt faint, woozy, the wind in her hair.
La Pompey stopped his clowning, perplexed. 'She doh want it?'
Sebastian frowned. 'No.'
'She'll ride it,' Jennifer assured 'She just take a turn.'
'Maybe she'll try it tomorrow,' La Pompey reasoned. 'When nobody arong She must feel shy to ride it now. Mr. Hartwood, you mus encourage her. Why you look so sad?'
So why do I bother to give you this excerpt? I have given it to show two things. How the people speak and, more importantly, for you to see and feel the emotions of the family. The servants, they too are a part of the family. These people, all of them, care for each other, but they do not understand each other. A huge theme of this book is our relationships with those closest to us. These relationship are never stagnant; they are complicated, messy knots.
What does the word "steupsed" mean? Some of the colloquialisms I do not understand. Maybe Wikipedia will clue me in?
*************************************************
I had to give you this excerpt found 13% through the book:
We treat politicians like parents. It's the same relationship. We never forgive them if they fuck up.
Well that is true. I think we cannot forgive our parents because we want to see them as Gods. They should be perfect. Even when we ourselves become parents and know we are full of mistakes, we still want our parents to be pretty darn perfect. It would be nice if our politicians could be trusted, admired, a bit above ordinary human beings. I just never thought of it that way.
***************************************
I have just begun this; I have only read 10% of the egalley I received from NetGalley. An egalley is an ARC book in e-format. Please read the book description, it seems foolish to just repeat what is already written!
Sabine and George had many years ago left England and moved to Trinidad. They had planned a three year stay, but then they stayed and now many, many years have passed and Trinidad is there home. The book is about Trinidad, the culture and the history of the island (1950s - 2000), but also about Sabine's and Georges's relationship. What relationship stays fiexed? None, of course. How was it before as newlyweds? How is it now? Different, that is all one can assume.... But what has made it change, and is change good or bad or a lovely mixture? We will see! I am intrigued. George has just found hidden letters written by his wife. Not just a few, but boxes of letters During 26 years Sabine was writing to Eric Williams, the Prime Minister of Trinidad after British rule ended. Why were Sabine's letters hidden away here in their house? Were they answered? Had there been an affair?
George read till dawn. Sitting on the office floor, his back against the wall. He read every letter, mouthing the words. Three hundred and fifty-eight letters in all. "Dear Mr. Williams." Nothing was straightforward as a love affair: passion, guilt, betrayal all the usual to and fro. No. This was far worse. He stopped several times to ponder, lost in reveries of their life together. He only knew the half of it, only half her despair.
The letters were originals. Unsent. Communiqués to the self in some respects. He found no replies and wondered if they were in another stash, other boxes hidden elsewhere in the house. From what she had written he began to understand.
Me? I do not understand. I am intrigued. I want to know more, and I want to know more about Trinidad. I have already glimpsed a bit. I have met the native Trinidadians. I had a bit of a hard time understanding their collooquialisms, but now I am getting the hang of it. The rampant vice, corrupt politicians and police force, the oppressive heat: all of this has hit me. Was it like this when they arrived? When they arrived Sabine was young and beautiful and she was "that white woman on the green bicycle" that attracted everyone's attention. What has happened during the last 50 years. I want to know.
***************************************
BEFORE READING:
"Equal love and attention go into the marriage and the country at the heart of this Orange Prize short-listed novel... It's a book packed with meaty themes, from racism to corruption to passion and loyalty."
-Seven, The Sunday Telegraph
Looks very interesting to me!
I finished this book last night, before I went to bed, but it is still night or early, early morning. 3:30 AM to be precise! I cannot sleep. I keep thinking abut this book and how I shhould explain why I adore it. It swallowed me, sucked on me, swished me around, pounded me and then spit me out. Or have you ever been tumbled and beaten by a crashing wave? When you escape, thrown up on shore, dizzy, without footing, tousled, pummelled; that is another way of describing how you feel after reading this book. Chrissie, this is not helping..... be specific! Explain! How?! Where do I begin?
I will begin by saying you feel physically beaten and brutalized by this book. Well, I did. The land, the people, the pounding heat, the fruit that fall down on on your head, the insects that attack, the earth that rumbles and moves so you are shaken. You physically feel this book. With the author's words you feel life on the island of Trinidad. I cannot explain it better than that. And you feel the youth and sexual attraction of Sabine when she arrives, when she is atop that green bicycle pedalling all over the island, scared of NOTHING! She is too busy to be scared, There is not an ouce of fear even in situations where perhaps she should have been frightened. She is so alive and beautidul and sexy atop that bicycle. Everyone noticed her. Cars almost collided. And you see her when she is in her seventies, old and beaten by the sun and all the other forces of this island. This book is sensual. When a couple cannot talk, cannot communicate, they use sex to pound each other; it is the only means left to reach out to the other.
Mentally this book puts you in a turmoil too. This book is historical fiction. You get the history of Trinidad from the 1950s through to 2007. The history isn't on the edge of the stroy but it IS the story. The whole story. It is the central theme. You cannot close the covers of this book and not understand what happened there in Trinidad during this time period. Such is impossible. A central theme of all this is colonialism. Europeans sucking the sap out of this West Indian island. It is about the love/hate feelings between the black Africans, the French Creole aristocracy and the Europeans. I have lived in different countries. I know what is is like to be plunked down in a culture that you do not understand. How do you feel when you arive and when you have been there for years? Sabine and her husband George arrived with completely different intentions. Sabine didn't really want to come. This made me feel cold toward her. But which of the two let the island's culture suck them in more? That is an interesting question? I also understand the turmoil Sabine felt because she didn't agree with her husband about the basics; how long would they stay or what was the purpose of their stay on the island?! I actually came to fully understand Sabine. I joined her side, but hej you do not understand where she really stood until you read this book. Read this book. It is marvellous.
I feel like removing stars from all the books I have recently read so that when I give this five stars you will see how this book sparkles and is illuminated by the five stars. I do not think this book will fit everybody. It fit me perfectly. Are you interested in how it feels to be a foreigner in a new country? Are you interested in history? Do you want an emotional ride? Do you enjoy the excerpts given below? Those are the suestions you should ask yourself when you decide whether you want to read this book! If you answer yes, then read this book.
********************************************************
49% percent through the book:
I absolutely love the book. the more I read,the more it pulls me in. I absolutely adore how it describes Trinidad and those living there. The plot line goes backwards. You start in 2006, but then when you know these people and care for them, when you NEED to know more, that is when the author dips into the past. It is the writing style that draws you in.
You all know that I am not interested in cuisine or cooking. Me, I cook as quickly as I can. But this suthor entices me with the Trinidadian cuisine:
It was Venus who got me cooking. She introduced George and me to creole cuisine, which she called blue food: sweet potatoe, eddoes, cassava, yams.
'Good old-fashioned stodge,'George called it.
Venus brewed up drinks, too - a red cordial a bit like cranberry juice: sorrel. Another from the bark of a tree: mauby, a green liquorice-type medicine we choked back. In months, our diets had changed for ever. Venus devised our menus. Instead of reading the cookbook, I hung around the kitchen.
'What are you doing?' I asked, peering over her shoulder. She was stripping down the stalks of some large leaves.
'It's dasheen bush.'
'What's that?'
'For callaloo.'
'Can't you just chop them up and put them in the soup?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'You hadda take out dis vein furs.'
'Why?'
'It trouble de throat. Make it itch. Her eyes shone. I stared. Venus nodded and smiled, suppressing her amusement. (at 49%)
Just as how the plot goes backwards in time so you want to know when it is finally presented to you, the same is true here. Callaloo has been mentioned many times. I have been asking myself: What IS that? Now I know. I also finally found out what steupsed means. Wikipedia didn't help me. Always the author makes us want to know before we are told! Finally, I know why Sabine speaks French and why the people in this former British colony revert to French. I am only told when I find myself going crazy with curiosity.
I SAID I wouldn't give any more excerpts, but yes, I just broke down. I simply had too. NOW NO MORE EXCERPTS, no matter how wonderful the lines are. I think this book will get five stars. I cannot believe I have half left. What is going to happen next?!
*****************************************************
32% through the book:
I love how everything is described - the people, the places, the feel of Trinidad. I knew nothing about Trinidad, but know I feel I am there. One more excerpt and that will just have to do. Here we are at the World Cup football match between the Soca Warriors of Trinidad and the opposing Peruvians:
Everyone wore red. Flags hung from shoulders, faces were painted with the Trinidad and Tobago colours. Conch horns bellowed. Vendors greeted ticket holders well in advance of the entrance, hawking writstbands, T-shirts, whistles, car stickers. George and Clock dodged them, drifting up the main corridor towards the stadium entrance, stopping to buy cherry-flavoured snow cones. Four in the afternoon and the sun poured down. They climbed the stairs to the balconies, arriving at the top, gazing out onto the scratchy yellos-grass pitch....
George and Clock made their way down an aisle and across a row of seats. George opened his giant golf umbrella and they sat under it eating their melting snow cones and warm peanuts, watching a fat man dressed in a red satin suit and red cowboy hat goose-stepping around the pitch. (at 32%)
The writing is vividly colored. You hear a cacophony of voices, shrill cries, whistles and the reader is right there in that stadium under the glaring sun. I love it.
*************************************************
21% through the book:
So the bicycle it is found again, There it is: clean and sparkling and repaired. All had their own memories tied to this bike. Memories of Sabine on this bike. Memories of a person who had been! The faces looked on expectantly when the bike was put before Sabine again:
La Pompey (the handyman) laughed. 'Yeah, man. Try it, nuh.'
Jennifer (the maid) cackled, blushing through her black skin. 'Mrs Harwood, give it a try, nuh. I cyan believe you ride it once.'
Everyone turned to look at Sabine.
Sabine backed away, holding onto her dog. 'Are you crazy? Jennifer give it to Chantal.'
'How she go ride it up dat hill?' Jennifer retorted.
Sabine looked at George: he was blushing, heat in his face. Was he hurt?
'Well, give it away to your friend who runs the charity shop at the church. Take it away. I can't believe we still have it lying around. Give it away, for God's sake.'
Sabine looked at their expectant faces, all of a sudden crowdedin.
Memories flooded up. Eric Williams in his flashy American car, sailing past. The look he gave her, through the windo, questions in his eyes. She felt faint, woozy, the wind in her hair.
La Pompey stopped his clowning, perplexed. 'She doh want it?'
Sebastian frowned. 'No.'
'She'll ride it,' Jennifer assured 'She just take a turn.'
'Maybe she'll try it tomorrow,' La Pompey reasoned. 'When nobody arong She must feel shy to ride it now. Mr. Hartwood, you mus encourage her. Why you look so sad?'
So why do I bother to give you this excerpt? I have given it to show two things. How the people speak and, more importantly, for you to see and feel the emotions of the family. The servants, they too are a part of the family. These people, all of them, care for each other, but they do not understand each other. A huge theme of this book is our relationships with those closest to us. These relationship are never stagnant; they are complicated, messy knots.
What does the word "steupsed" mean? Some of the colloquialisms I do not understand. Maybe Wikipedia will clue me in?
*************************************************
I had to give you this excerpt found 13% through the book:
We treat politicians like parents. It's the same relationship. We never forgive them if they fuck up.
Well that is true. I think we cannot forgive our parents because we want to see them as Gods. They should be perfect. Even when we ourselves become parents and know we are full of mistakes, we still want our parents to be pretty darn perfect. It would be nice if our politicians could be trusted, admired, a bit above ordinary human beings. I just never thought of it that way.
***************************************
I have just begun this; I have only read 10% of the egalley I received from NetGalley. An egalley is an ARC book in e-format. Please read the book description, it seems foolish to just repeat what is already written!
Sabine and George had many years ago left England and moved to Trinidad. They had planned a three year stay, but then they stayed and now many, many years have passed and Trinidad is there home. The book is about Trinidad, the culture and the history of the island (1950s - 2000), but also about Sabine's and Georges's relationship. What relationship stays fiexed? None, of course. How was it before as newlyweds? How is it now? Different, that is all one can assume.... But what has made it change, and is change good or bad or a lovely mixture? We will see! I am intrigued. George has just found hidden letters written by his wife. Not just a few, but boxes of letters During 26 years Sabine was writing to Eric Williams, the Prime Minister of Trinidad after British rule ended. Why were Sabine's letters hidden away here in their house? Were they answered? Had there been an affair?
George read till dawn. Sitting on the office floor, his back against the wall. He read every letter, mouthing the words. Three hundred and fifty-eight letters in all. "Dear Mr. Williams." Nothing was straightforward as a love affair: passion, guilt, betrayal all the usual to and fro. No. This was far worse. He stopped several times to ponder, lost in reveries of their life together. He only knew the half of it, only half her despair.
The letters were originals. Unsent. Communiqués to the self in some respects. He found no replies and wondered if they were in another stash, other boxes hidden elsewhere in the house. From what she had written he began to understand.
Me? I do not understand. I am intrigued. I want to know more, and I want to know more about Trinidad. I have already glimpsed a bit. I have met the native Trinidadians. I had a bit of a hard time understanding their collooquialisms, but now I am getting the hang of it. The rampant vice, corrupt politicians and police force, the oppressive heat: all of this has hit me. Was it like this when they arrived? When they arrived Sabine was young and beautiful and she was "that white woman on the green bicycle" that attracted everyone's attention. What has happened during the last 50 years. I want to know.
***************************************
BEFORE READING:
"Equal love and attention go into the marriage and the country at the heart of this Orange Prize short-listed novel... It's a book packed with meaty themes, from racism to corruption to passion and loyalty."
-Seven, The Sunday Telegraph
Looks very interesting to me!
March 9, 2020
In the 1950s British couple George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad and Tobago for George to start his new role. The couple's goal was to be there for 2 year- 3 years max but by 2006 we realize they are there for life. A lot happens over the next 5 decades- George assimilates to Trinidad, buys land, starts laying down roots- he even goes as far as getting TT citizenship. Sabine on the other hand still hopes for the day when they will eventually pack up and move back to England. Till then she rides her green bicycle around Port of Spain and writes letters to the then Prime Minister- Eric Williams. Life for these two doesn't go as planned and it unfolds painfully so.
If I am being honest, I really did not like this book for a number of reasons:
1. None of the characters were likeable or I felt fully formed.
2. I felt that the book did not have to be so long- and the length led to it losing it's essence.
3. Too many things/plots/themes were explored and we didn't get one strong plot but weak plots/theme exploration throughout
4. I felt the author should have choose one single story and stuck with it as opposed to trying to fit everything in.
5. As a Jamaican I am not verse with a lot of Trinidad and Tobago's history and culture but there were some cringe worthy moments and references...
6. I can't help but wonder how much artistic license the author took and I am still thinking about this.
Overall, I struggled with this book- it was dense and very underwhelming.
I am curious to get more feedback from reads of Trinidad and Tobago heritage.
If I am being honest, I really did not like this book for a number of reasons:
1. None of the characters were likeable or I felt fully formed.
2. I felt that the book did not have to be so long- and the length led to it losing it's essence.
3. Too many things/plots/themes were explored and we didn't get one strong plot but weak plots/theme exploration throughout
4. I felt the author should have choose one single story and stuck with it as opposed to trying to fit everything in.
5. As a Jamaican I am not verse with a lot of Trinidad and Tobago's history and culture but there were some cringe worthy moments and references...
6. I can't help but wonder how much artistic license the author took and I am still thinking about this.
Overall, I struggled with this book- it was dense and very underwhelming.
I am curious to get more feedback from reads of Trinidad and Tobago heritage.
July 10, 2021
This lushly written novel blends politics, colonialism and race with an intimate depiction of a couple’s marriage over a fifty year span in post colonial Trinidad.Narrated with shifting time frames and alternating perspectives, we glimpse a portrait of a complex and evolving society that is reconciling its past and inching forward into the future.
George and Sabine Harwood come to Trinidad in 1956, having recently married.George has signed a three year work contract and plans for the couple’s return to England at the end of the assignment.Sabine is reluctant to live in Trinidad but resolves to endure this short term stay despite her feeling that English colonists are not welcome.Gradually she realizes that George has no intention of returning her to England.He has been seduced by the trappings of wealth and importance that are unattainable for him in England.Sabine is trapped in an inhospitable country.While she still loves her husband, she is aware that he has violated her trust.
The arc of the marriage is told through the couple’s differing perspectives.The exposition starts in 2006 when they are septuagenarians and shifts through earlier time periods.We witness their changing attitudes towards each other, their children and the Trinidadian people.The nation’s transition from colonized to self government is accompanied by turbulence, greed and corruption.The landscape of the couple’s marriage reflects the same trends.George embraces the greed of acquisition, forever seeking riches while remaining oblivious to the needs of the native Trinidadians.Sabine is never at ease in her new home yet tries to adapt by embracing the politics of the country.Their emotional journeys rarely converge and often mirror the political shifts in the nation.
Imagery weaves throughout the novel and evokes a visual richness that transforms the island’s beauty into a secondary character and rounds out the narrative’s texture.Sabine looks at the verdant hills outside her home and views the hills as a lascivious seductress. She tells the hills,” I hate you.My husband loves you.”
Gradually a portrait emerges of a couple adapting to a country and culture where they are outsiders and not necessarily welcomed.Both George and Sabine understand their circumstances only from perspectives of assumed entitlement and privilege.While each has a different response to the shifting conditions, their combined perceptions provide insight into the history of Trinidad.
While reading this novel, I was conscious of viewing history through the prism of the privileged outsider couple.A wider range of viewpoints would have broadened the narrative scope.Nevertheless,Monique Roffey has created a panoramic work that conveys her vision of her homeland.I was enriched by the experience of visiting her world.
George and Sabine Harwood come to Trinidad in 1956, having recently married.George has signed a three year work contract and plans for the couple’s return to England at the end of the assignment.Sabine is reluctant to live in Trinidad but resolves to endure this short term stay despite her feeling that English colonists are not welcome.Gradually she realizes that George has no intention of returning her to England.He has been seduced by the trappings of wealth and importance that are unattainable for him in England.Sabine is trapped in an inhospitable country.While she still loves her husband, she is aware that he has violated her trust.
The arc of the marriage is told through the couple’s differing perspectives.The exposition starts in 2006 when they are septuagenarians and shifts through earlier time periods.We witness their changing attitudes towards each other, their children and the Trinidadian people.The nation’s transition from colonized to self government is accompanied by turbulence, greed and corruption.The landscape of the couple’s marriage reflects the same trends.George embraces the greed of acquisition, forever seeking riches while remaining oblivious to the needs of the native Trinidadians.Sabine is never at ease in her new home yet tries to adapt by embracing the politics of the country.Their emotional journeys rarely converge and often mirror the political shifts in the nation.
Imagery weaves throughout the novel and evokes a visual richness that transforms the island’s beauty into a secondary character and rounds out the narrative’s texture.Sabine looks at the verdant hills outside her home and views the hills as a lascivious seductress. She tells the hills,” I hate you.My husband loves you.”
Gradually a portrait emerges of a couple adapting to a country and culture where they are outsiders and not necessarily welcomed.Both George and Sabine understand their circumstances only from perspectives of assumed entitlement and privilege.While each has a different response to the shifting conditions, their combined perceptions provide insight into the history of Trinidad.
While reading this novel, I was conscious of viewing history through the prism of the privileged outsider couple.A wider range of viewpoints would have broadened the narrative scope.Nevertheless,Monique Roffey has created a panoramic work that conveys her vision of her homeland.I was enriched by the experience of visiting her world.
September 10, 2025
4 stars = Fantastic and easy to recommend.
“Why is it the young are the only ones who get angry? Or the very old? Why do we fall asleep in middle age?”
When I started reading this one, I had been in Vietnam for 3 months during monsoon season and was struggling with the incessant high humidity. The synopsis mentioning the MC’s struggles with the same is what made me pick it up for consideration, and the writing is what kept me reading. Set in Trinidad, this novel is about an English/French couple that moved there in the 1950’s, and follows them for half a century, during a time of significant political turmoil. The wife hates the place from the first day and is only pacified by her husband telling her “just one more year.” But you know from the first chapter that they are still there decades later. Needless to say, there is friction in the marriage.
“It had been immediate, a strong physical attraction. He had fallen, and that was that. Head over heels, with the sounds and smells, with the smiles and shapes, with all the bewitching qualities of another woman called Trinidad.”
The novel presents a fascinating contrast between the wife and husband's attitudes toward the island community, highlighting the irony that the one initially resistant to Trinidad is ultimately transformed by it. The wife tries to break out of the expat enclave but struggles to form friendships with locals in the shadow of colonization. Her unique coping mechanism for depression and feelings of isolation serves as an engaging narrative device to convey the historical political changes that occur in the background. Between that and the story alternating timelines between the past and present, its format felt fresh and original.
“You can fancy lots of other people. But the heart is small and fussy: it knows exactly who it wants. You only have room in it to love one or two people in a lifetime.”
This novel is an excellent choice for a book club discussion, offering much to consider. It seamlessly covers a wide range of thought-provoking topics including sensuality, marital drama, immigration, class, race, and the effects of colonization, without feeling forced or preachy. I am impressed that Roffey included so many reflective themes in 430 pages, while also vividly describing the island and its oppressive climate.
“The heat gets to us all in the end, especially the Europeans. We’ve seen so many come and go. Mosquitoes like white skin.”
Historical fiction that entertains while teaching is one of my favorite genres and this book is a prime example. As my first novel by Roffey, it left a strong impression. I would recommend it to readers that enjoy atmospheric novels that feature complex social structures and to those that appreciate realistic portrayals of long marriages that showcase the gritty alongside the smooth aspects.
“You might even get used to the heat.
No. Not that. Never.”
-----
First Sentence: Every afternoon, around four, the iguana fell out of the coconut tree.
Favorite Quote: Massa was determined not to educate his society. Massa was quite right. To educate is to emancipate.
“Why is it the young are the only ones who get angry? Or the very old? Why do we fall asleep in middle age?”
When I started reading this one, I had been in Vietnam for 3 months during monsoon season and was struggling with the incessant high humidity. The synopsis mentioning the MC’s struggles with the same is what made me pick it up for consideration, and the writing is what kept me reading. Set in Trinidad, this novel is about an English/French couple that moved there in the 1950’s, and follows them for half a century, during a time of significant political turmoil. The wife hates the place from the first day and is only pacified by her husband telling her “just one more year.” But you know from the first chapter that they are still there decades later. Needless to say, there is friction in the marriage.
“It had been immediate, a strong physical attraction. He had fallen, and that was that. Head over heels, with the sounds and smells, with the smiles and shapes, with all the bewitching qualities of another woman called Trinidad.”
The novel presents a fascinating contrast between the wife and husband's attitudes toward the island community, highlighting the irony that the one initially resistant to Trinidad is ultimately transformed by it. The wife tries to break out of the expat enclave but struggles to form friendships with locals in the shadow of colonization. Her unique coping mechanism for depression and feelings of isolation serves as an engaging narrative device to convey the historical political changes that occur in the background. Between that and the story alternating timelines between the past and present, its format felt fresh and original.
“You can fancy lots of other people. But the heart is small and fussy: it knows exactly who it wants. You only have room in it to love one or two people in a lifetime.”
This novel is an excellent choice for a book club discussion, offering much to consider. It seamlessly covers a wide range of thought-provoking topics including sensuality, marital drama, immigration, class, race, and the effects of colonization, without feeling forced or preachy. I am impressed that Roffey included so many reflective themes in 430 pages, while also vividly describing the island and its oppressive climate.
“The heat gets to us all in the end, especially the Europeans. We’ve seen so many come and go. Mosquitoes like white skin.”
Historical fiction that entertains while teaching is one of my favorite genres and this book is a prime example. As my first novel by Roffey, it left a strong impression. I would recommend it to readers that enjoy atmospheric novels that feature complex social structures and to those that appreciate realistic portrayals of long marriages that showcase the gritty alongside the smooth aspects.
“You might even get used to the heat.
No. Not that. Never.”
-----
First Sentence: Every afternoon, around four, the iguana fell out of the coconut tree.
Favorite Quote: Massa was determined not to educate his society. Massa was quite right. To educate is to emancipate.
May 30, 2021
My reaction to The White Woman on the Green Bicycle can only be described as a mixed bag. There are parts I really liked and parts I didn't.
Monique Roffey's vivid depiction of Trinidad along with the lush imagery, is my favorite part about the book. Before this, I wasn't curious or even knowledgeable about Trinidad. The first thing I did after finishing this book was google Trinidad and read up as much as I could find on the internet. History and politics of the place have been entwined into the story. I love how the author has presented both the good and bad side of Trinidad - its beauty along with the racial tensions and political unrest.
It's very difficult to like any characters, especially Sabine. When we are first introduced to her, she is an old, bitter, constantly complaining woman, and very hard to sympathize with. However, the characters and reasons behind their behavior become clearer as we are taken back to 1956, when Sabine and George met for the first time and eventually got married.
When Sabine and George first moved to Trinidad in 1956 for George's three year work contract, they are a happy, very much in love couple. But it was not to remain so. George fell in love with Trinidad, while Sabine felt suffocated and couldn't wait to leave. Her desperation to leave the place evoked a whole lot of emotions in me - I could see how stuck, angry and betrayed she felt. What was meant to be three years turned to decades, and what was left of their marriage started to deteriorate further.
The story of George and Sabine's relationship is a sad one - they obviously love each other, but theirs was never destined to be a peaceful marriage as they are constantly at odds with each other. They fail to understand or accept each other. And isn't the reason for failure of so many relationships? To deal with her loneliness and anger, Sabine starts to take almost an obsessive interest in Trinidad's politics, specially in the leader of a particular party, the charismatic Eric Williams. She writes letters after letters to him - each of these long, sad letters contain her dreams, frustrations, concerns and shattered hopes. She never sends them and George is not aware of them until years later.
Due to the back-story of their marriage, I felt more sympathetic towards Sabine and even George to some extent, though I still could not like them. I felt very frustrated when an older Sabine still behaves like a bitter, immature woman. At times, I really wanted to scream at her. Still, somewhere I could understand what made her that way. Imagine being stuck in an unhappy marriage for decades together!
At many points in the book, I found myself very bored. The writing is very beautiful and I appreciate all the details, yet many parts of the book were too tedious to read. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more, had the characters been more likeable.
Overall:
The heartbreaking portrayal of the deterioration of a marriage in the midst of political upheaval in Trinidad.
Recommended?
Yes
Visit my Bookstagram for more book reviews:
Literarianism
Monique Roffey's vivid depiction of Trinidad along with the lush imagery, is my favorite part about the book. Before this, I wasn't curious or even knowledgeable about Trinidad. The first thing I did after finishing this book was google Trinidad and read up as much as I could find on the internet. History and politics of the place have been entwined into the story. I love how the author has presented both the good and bad side of Trinidad - its beauty along with the racial tensions and political unrest.
It's very difficult to like any characters, especially Sabine. When we are first introduced to her, she is an old, bitter, constantly complaining woman, and very hard to sympathize with. However, the characters and reasons behind their behavior become clearer as we are taken back to 1956, when Sabine and George met for the first time and eventually got married.
When Sabine and George first moved to Trinidad in 1956 for George's three year work contract, they are a happy, very much in love couple. But it was not to remain so. George fell in love with Trinidad, while Sabine felt suffocated and couldn't wait to leave. Her desperation to leave the place evoked a whole lot of emotions in me - I could see how stuck, angry and betrayed she felt. What was meant to be three years turned to decades, and what was left of their marriage started to deteriorate further.
The story of George and Sabine's relationship is a sad one - they obviously love each other, but theirs was never destined to be a peaceful marriage as they are constantly at odds with each other. They fail to understand or accept each other. And isn't the reason for failure of so many relationships? To deal with her loneliness and anger, Sabine starts to take almost an obsessive interest in Trinidad's politics, specially in the leader of a particular party, the charismatic Eric Williams. She writes letters after letters to him - each of these long, sad letters contain her dreams, frustrations, concerns and shattered hopes. She never sends them and George is not aware of them until years later.
Due to the back-story of their marriage, I felt more sympathetic towards Sabine and even George to some extent, though I still could not like them. I felt very frustrated when an older Sabine still behaves like a bitter, immature woman. At times, I really wanted to scream at her. Still, somewhere I could understand what made her that way. Imagine being stuck in an unhappy marriage for decades together!
At many points in the book, I found myself very bored. The writing is very beautiful and I appreciate all the details, yet many parts of the book were too tedious to read. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more, had the characters been more likeable.
Overall:
The heartbreaking portrayal of the deterioration of a marriage in the midst of political upheaval in Trinidad.
Recommended?
Yes
Visit my Bookstagram for more book reviews:
Literarianism
March 26, 2012
I read White Woman on the Green Bicycle and completely enjoyed it. I am from Trinidad and Tobago and thought the author did a masterful job capturing the beauty of our language, the richness of our culture, the complexity and disappointment of our politics. I am happy for modern fictional literature on Trinidad. Far too long it has been monopolized by V.S. Naipaul and his ilk freezing the land, people, and culture in a post-colonial time warp. I appreciate the raw honesty of Monique Roffey's writing, although it sometimes paints a painful disappointing legacy of local politics, race relations, corruption, and unmanaged oil wealth.
My only disappointment is that the book is written solely from the perspective of an expatriate European couple giving their interpretations of Trinidadian culture. Although part of the culture expatriates and creoles live a life apart from the general population. I wish there was a way to incorporate more of a native voice.
One of the most fantastic features of Ms. Roffey's writing is the way she makes our island, our culture, the history, the flora, and fauna indispensable characters in the book. National heroes like Brian Lara, the Mighty Sparrow, and Dr. Eric Williams make wonderful cameos projecting an interesting plot line. Beautifully written.
My only disappointment is that the book is written solely from the perspective of an expatriate European couple giving their interpretations of Trinidadian culture. Although part of the culture expatriates and creoles live a life apart from the general population. I wish there was a way to incorporate more of a native voice.
One of the most fantastic features of Ms. Roffey's writing is the way she makes our island, our culture, the history, the flora, and fauna indispensable characters in the book. National heroes like Brian Lara, the Mighty Sparrow, and Dr. Eric Williams make wonderful cameos projecting an interesting plot line. Beautifully written.
May 15, 2012
This is a beautiful book. If you only read one book set in the Caribbean, this should be it. The writing transports me to the island of Trinidad, with the heat and the vegetation and the turmoil of centuries of different groups of people moving through. I loved how it was written, with the majority of the story happening in the present, and then other sections going back to the beginning and then moving forward to meet up to where it started.
The story is about George and Sabine Harwood, who come to Trinidad in 1956, right after marrying, and right after Trinidad has achieved 'independence.' Throughout the book, Sabine converses with Trinidad as the curvy green woman stealing her man away, while also writing unsent letters to Eric Williams, the new leader of the nation. There are many conflicts that seem to belong to the island, potentially lacking any possibility for resolution. Sabine ends up loathing the island, and you feel it with her. Her children are also Trinidadian through and through, which isolates her further.
The best opening line:
"Every afternoon, around four, the iguana fell out of the coconut tree."
On Trinidadians:
"Frank stood erect, gazing at the priest, absorbing every word. This was how Trinidadians behaved in church: alert, composed, peering respectfully at the altar, awaiting a miracle. Carnival and Lent. Bacchanal and guilt. Trinidad in a nutshell. This was a nation of sin-loving people who made a point of praying for forgiveness."
"Sabine looked at her daughter, who looked just like George. She was bold like him, clever like him. A Trinidadian, like him."
"Love happens to you... The other person's spirit climbs into you. You feel so much for them. If they get hurt, you hurt. If you hurt them, you hurt yourself."
For culinary inspiration:
"But Jennifer only rolled her eyes. She'd dominated the kitchen all day, baking gooey cakes and sweet-breads, stewing chicken with brown sugar. She'd been making pellau for the weekend. On the kitchen table, two halves of Madeira sponge were just out of the oven, cooling on racks."
"'Jennifer is baking cakes in the kitchen.'
'What kind?'
'Banana.'
'The best.'
'I know you like to eat banana cake when it's still warm.'"
"Jennifer brought out a pot of tea and slices of ginger cake."
The market on Charlotte Street, the first time:
"Jars and jars of spices: nutmeg, mace, powdered ginger, star anise. Vermilion salted prunes, magenta dried mango. Castles of brown sugared coconut candy behind glass cabinets... breadfruit and jack fruit and sapodilla plums. Guavas and jars of dark unguent which was guava jam. Custard apples. Pawpaws, which were rude and pendulous, somehow still growing. Tamarinds in their rough-smooth suitcases. Choko and okra and bodi and pumpkins. Limes like grapefruit and grapefruit like cannonballs. Bananas still on their stalks, great emerald hands."
About using plants to heal (something our boat captain in the Bahamas talked about too):
"When Pascale cut open her knee, Lucy boiled up pomegranate flowers into a tea for her to sip and the cut healed quickly. When the children had diarrhoea, she gave them pomegranate bark to chew. Colds and coughs Lucy cured with a cool beverage of hibiscus petals. Jackfruit, if they were constipated. Spinach leaves for poultices on boils. Ginger for gas, slices of aubergine, melongene, for minor sprains.
The story is about George and Sabine Harwood, who come to Trinidad in 1956, right after marrying, and right after Trinidad has achieved 'independence.' Throughout the book, Sabine converses with Trinidad as the curvy green woman stealing her man away, while also writing unsent letters to Eric Williams, the new leader of the nation. There are many conflicts that seem to belong to the island, potentially lacking any possibility for resolution. Sabine ends up loathing the island, and you feel it with her. Her children are also Trinidadian through and through, which isolates her further.
The best opening line:
"Every afternoon, around four, the iguana fell out of the coconut tree."
On Trinidadians:
"Frank stood erect, gazing at the priest, absorbing every word. This was how Trinidadians behaved in church: alert, composed, peering respectfully at the altar, awaiting a miracle. Carnival and Lent. Bacchanal and guilt. Trinidad in a nutshell. This was a nation of sin-loving people who made a point of praying for forgiveness."
"Sabine looked at her daughter, who looked just like George. She was bold like him, clever like him. A Trinidadian, like him."
"Love happens to you... The other person's spirit climbs into you. You feel so much for them. If they get hurt, you hurt. If you hurt them, you hurt yourself."
For culinary inspiration:
"But Jennifer only rolled her eyes. She'd dominated the kitchen all day, baking gooey cakes and sweet-breads, stewing chicken with brown sugar. She'd been making pellau for the weekend. On the kitchen table, two halves of Madeira sponge were just out of the oven, cooling on racks."
"'Jennifer is baking cakes in the kitchen.'
'What kind?'
'Banana.'
'The best.'
'I know you like to eat banana cake when it's still warm.'"
"Jennifer brought out a pot of tea and slices of ginger cake."
The market on Charlotte Street, the first time:
"Jars and jars of spices: nutmeg, mace, powdered ginger, star anise. Vermilion salted prunes, magenta dried mango. Castles of brown sugared coconut candy behind glass cabinets... breadfruit and jack fruit and sapodilla plums. Guavas and jars of dark unguent which was guava jam. Custard apples. Pawpaws, which were rude and pendulous, somehow still growing. Tamarinds in their rough-smooth suitcases. Choko and okra and bodi and pumpkins. Limes like grapefruit and grapefruit like cannonballs. Bananas still on their stalks, great emerald hands."
About using plants to heal (something our boat captain in the Bahamas talked about too):
"When Pascale cut open her knee, Lucy boiled up pomegranate flowers into a tea for her to sip and the cut healed quickly. When the children had diarrhoea, she gave them pomegranate bark to chew. Colds and coughs Lucy cured with a cool beverage of hibiscus petals. Jackfruit, if they were constipated. Spinach leaves for poultices on boils. Ginger for gas, slices of aubergine, melongene, for minor sprains.
July 7, 2021
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is a multi-layered story of love and betrayal between a man and a woman, a man and a country, and a country and a politician. January, 1956 is a pivotal year for newlyweds, Sabine and George Hayward, and the island of Trinidad. Sabine and George have just arrived in Trinidad for a three-year job stint, as many other white men, hoping to enjoy a higher standard of living and position that was not attainable in England. Instantly, George falls in love with the island; after all he has the status of his work and being a white Englishman in a British colony. Sabine’s initial reaction is how can she put up with the heat for three years, and without much of a support system feels even more isolated and tormented as no one will explain the protocol of all of the unwritten rules regarding the genders, the races, and the classes. So she takes to exploring the island on her green bicycle, oblivious to everyone’s reaction to her exploring. Meanwhile, a charismatic intellect, Eric Williams, has formed the People’s National Movement (PNM) fueling political unrest speaking to the chokehold of colonialism on Trinidad. The events of 1956 have an influence upon Sabine and George, and all that follows evolves from that point.
The structure of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle divides the story into four time periods, 2006, 1956, 1963, and 1970. And, the book actually begins with the 2006 section, which is at the end of Sabine’s and George’s life together, and many years after the independence movement. It opens on a violent strained period in both the marriage and the political climate in Trinidad. In this section the couple’s relationship has a “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” feel, especially since at this point I did not fully understand how Sabine and George evolved to this point in their relationship. This technique catches the reader unaware as the book goes on for several chapters for the 2006 period, providing an ending to the story as if told in chronological order. But, do not despair, as the best is yet to come, and you will be treated to a book with two endings. This was a gutsy decision by the author, but serves to help distinguish this book. The other timelines did an excellent job of seamlessly integrating political issues involving race, the legacy of colonialism and slavery with the personal conflicts Sabine and George experience in their marriage. Personally, I enjoyed the blending of fact with fiction, and having Eric Williams, the Mighty Sparrow meet with the fictional characters helped to engage the reader through the gradual revelation of the past.
Ms. Roffey has a keen eye for putting into words the lush verdant landscape of Trinidad, creating a strong sense of place by the vivid descriptions resulting in imagery that feels like you are looking at a photograph. When I finished reading the novel, I came away feeling Ms. Roffey’s love of the island and grateful that she allowed me to be a voyeur to her Trinidad. I recommend this book to readers of literary fiction and West Indian novels.
Reviewed by Beverly
APOOO Literary Book Review
The structure of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle divides the story into four time periods, 2006, 1956, 1963, and 1970. And, the book actually begins with the 2006 section, which is at the end of Sabine’s and George’s life together, and many years after the independence movement. It opens on a violent strained period in both the marriage and the political climate in Trinidad. In this section the couple’s relationship has a “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” feel, especially since at this point I did not fully understand how Sabine and George evolved to this point in their relationship. This technique catches the reader unaware as the book goes on for several chapters for the 2006 period, providing an ending to the story as if told in chronological order. But, do not despair, as the best is yet to come, and you will be treated to a book with two endings. This was a gutsy decision by the author, but serves to help distinguish this book. The other timelines did an excellent job of seamlessly integrating political issues involving race, the legacy of colonialism and slavery with the personal conflicts Sabine and George experience in their marriage. Personally, I enjoyed the blending of fact with fiction, and having Eric Williams, the Mighty Sparrow meet with the fictional characters helped to engage the reader through the gradual revelation of the past.
Ms. Roffey has a keen eye for putting into words the lush verdant landscape of Trinidad, creating a strong sense of place by the vivid descriptions resulting in imagery that feels like you are looking at a photograph. When I finished reading the novel, I came away feeling Ms. Roffey’s love of the island and grateful that she allowed me to be a voyeur to her Trinidad. I recommend this book to readers of literary fiction and West Indian novels.
Reviewed by Beverly
APOOO Literary Book Review
August 4, 2011
The excitement of discovering this book was one I have not felt for years. It is all the things great literature should be: it shows as well as teaches; it is recognizable but fresh; it is on some level profound; it is memorable. The book is written in dialect, and it was a revelation to me to see phrases I’d only ever heard actually written down. It added much to the general impression of the first section of the book as a stage play. And a wonderful, rich, funny, tragic stage play it would be.
The cover copy of White Woman… says it is a love story, and so it is. But this is the story of a love affair with a country, and with a people, as well as love between two married people. Just as one recognizes the ups-and-downs in a marriage, the love affair with the country follows the same pattern—lavish love, and lashing pain. Sabine, the main character, describes her early love of George, her husband, in the following way:
Monique Roffey is not really a newcomer: this is her second novel, which became a nominee for The Orange Prize, one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the UK the previous year. Roffey’s first novel, Sun Dog, was published in 2002 by Scribner. Sun Dog employed magic-realism, and was warmly received by critics. My guess is that it may show us the early promise of this accomplished novelist.
The cover copy of White Woman… says it is a love story, and so it is. But this is the story of a love affair with a country, and with a people, as well as love between two married people. Just as one recognizes the ups-and-downs in a marriage, the love affair with the country follows the same pattern—lavish love, and lashing pain. Sabine, the main character, describes her early love of George, her husband, in the following way:
Our courtship was very swift. We won each other, you could say. We were each other’s prize. People liked us, we were one of those couples; other people enjoyed having us around. Parties were gayer when we were there. Others basked in our happiness, envied our devotion. We brought out the potential in each other. George, in those days, gave me the experience of being at my best, moments, hours, days, a long period of complete happiness.”“We brought out the potential in each other.” That’s the way I describe love—a state where one is something different, something better, when the other person is there. The story takes place in Trinidad over a period of fifty years. Sabine and George come as representatives of a British shipping company, and find a way to live and love through the rise and fall of politicians promising more for locals, less for foreigners. In an interview, Roffey tells us she did a lot of research before she began to write. The tight narration of the political scene in Trinidad during the 1960’s and 1970’s does much to enhance our interest in the concomitant lives of Sabine and George. One comes away feeling one has witnessed history--and that we share that history. The book has connected us to the Trinidad, a “landscape parading it’s fertility, a banquet of eccentric delicacies.”
Monique Roffey is not really a newcomer: this is her second novel, which became a nominee for The Orange Prize, one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the UK the previous year. Roffey’s first novel, Sun Dog, was published in 2002 by Scribner. Sun Dog employed magic-realism, and was warmly received by critics. My guess is that it may show us the early promise of this accomplished novelist.
November 29, 2011
Oh dear, seccond book in a row that I rapidly flipped pages hoping to get to the end. Where to start? The main character is fundamentally unlikeable -- her political (and it seems?) sexual obssession with Trinidad's first prime minister is almost inpenetrably contradictory -- she wants a better life for Trinidad's black population who she knows only as servants and violent "others" or worse b/c she hates the island and hates not wanting to be wanted by it? (Plus as an aside all the nostalgia for English seasons, English stores and English meals is quite odd in one meant to be French). The book drags -- the real story here, the independence of Trinidad and Tobago, the clash between the established post-colonial poltical class and the Black Power movement of the 70s, even the out-migration hinted at in the stories of two of the maids-- are all minaturized as they are seen only through the cramped window of a frightened white woman who uses sexual power as long as she has it and then turns fat and bitter when she doesn't. Even her children aen't really characters (is the son gay? what was the daughter's tragic love story -- this book can't be bothered to tell you). In the end, dull to spend so much time with such a lifeless character in such a lively place.
April 2, 2012
In the fabric of every marriage there are rents and tears. As the years accumulate, there will be quite a few of them. Sometimes the patches are clumsy and remain weak; sometimes there is no patch, just secrets kept hidden from one’s mate. Roffey begins her novel at the 50-year mark of the marriage of George and Sabine Harwood, then takes us back to tell us how they got there.
The story parallels in time the transition in Trinidad from British rule to self-governance. I knew nothing about this country's history. Integral to the story, this history enhances rather than overpowers that of Sabine and George.
In short, Roffey's Orange Prize finalist is excellent, though it probably won't make my fictitious top ten list. Many of you know I usually rebel at novels that include dialect. With this I was suprised at my making an exception. Roffey treated all of her characters with respect - does that make a difference? In any case, it was right for both the setting and the story.
The story parallels in time the transition in Trinidad from British rule to self-governance. I knew nothing about this country's history. Integral to the story, this history enhances rather than overpowers that of Sabine and George.
In short, Roffey's Orange Prize finalist is excellent, though it probably won't make my fictitious top ten list. Many of you know I usually rebel at novels that include dialect. With this I was suprised at my making an exception. Roffey treated all of her characters with respect - does that make a difference? In any case, it was right for both the setting and the story.
July 22, 2017
This is a historical novel except for the first 189 pages, which is contemporary and near the end of the lives of George and Sabine Harwood, who moved from England to Trinidad in 1956, just at the end of British rule for the country. It f0llows the lives of Sabine and her husband along with the political changes in the country, the good, the bad and the ugly. I did not like this book, and while I might have liked Sabine had it started at the beginning, I really didn't given that it started at the end. Nor did I care much for George.
That said, it appears that plenty of people liked this. Roffey writes well--this wasn't an Orange Prize finalist for nothing. I just didn't care for the people in this book enough to like it.
That said, it appears that plenty of people liked this. Roffey writes well--this wasn't an Orange Prize finalist for nothing. I just didn't care for the people in this book enough to like it.
November 30, 2018
3.5 stars
A troubled marriage in a troubled country. This is certainly a very evocative book but I think it would have appealed more if I didn't find both George and Sabine quite so unlikable.
A troubled marriage in a troubled country. This is certainly a very evocative book but I think it would have appealed more if I didn't find both George and Sabine quite so unlikable.
December 2, 2010
I didn’t come across The White Woman on the Green Bicycle until it appeared on the longlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
I wasn’t sure that it would be my sort of book, but I heard so much praise that I really had to order a copy.
Since then it appeared on the shortlist, and now that I have read it I have to say that I would be thrilled to see it win. A wonderful book!
It tells the story of one woman, her life and marriage, and wraps around it the story of Trinidad in the second half of the twentieth century.
French born Sabine moved to Trinidad in 1956 with her English husband, George. He has a three year contract with a shipping company. It’s an adventure, and they are young, happy, and confident that they will suceed where, it seems, many before them have failed.
George fell in love with Trinidad. The surroundings, the climate, the lifestyle.
Monique Roffey’s rich and evocative prose makes it easy to see why. But she describes a darker and more violent side to Trinidad too.
Sabine hates Trinidad: the heat, the humidity, the rigid social code of the ex pat community, the racial segregation. She accepts that she wil have to stay until the end of her husband’s contract, but she sees her future in England.
But George sees his future in Trinidad, and has no intention of returning to England. He would happily spend his whole life in Trinidad. And so the relationship between Sabine and George, inevitably, deteriorates. They continue to love each other deeply, but they many never understand each other.
And so Sabine is tied: she could leave Trinidad, but she could never leave George.
Meanwhile, the country is changing. And one day Sabine is caught up in a rally for a new political party, a party demanding an end to colonial rule and better things for the native people, as she rides her green bicycle to the market.
She starts to take an interest in the local politics, she argues with the other ex pat wives, and bonds grow between her and her family’s native maids. She will never love the country but she grows to love its people and hope for their future. And she writes letters to the new party’s leader, sharing her hopes, her fears, her concerns, her ideas. She knows that she will never be able to send them and so she stores them away.
Her husband though is her mirror image. He continues to love the country, but he will never be more than an ex pat and he will never understand, never even want to understand its people.
And years later George will find Sabine’s letters…
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is a powerful, complex, rich story of a woman, a marriage and a country. There are many details, many emotions, and each and every one rings true.
Many questions are posed. Some are answered, but others are too difficult.
The story is non chronological – the ending is seen first, through George’s eyes and then the past is revealed from Sabine’s point of view. And that works well, focusing attention on events and relationships as they unfold without the distraction of wondering where they are leading.
The language and the imagery are dark and dazzling, slowly but surely painting complex and vivid pictures of personal and political histories.
And the story is compelling.
Awonderful book!
I wasn’t sure that it would be my sort of book, but I heard so much praise that I really had to order a copy.
Since then it appeared on the shortlist, and now that I have read it I have to say that I would be thrilled to see it win. A wonderful book!
It tells the story of one woman, her life and marriage, and wraps around it the story of Trinidad in the second half of the twentieth century.
French born Sabine moved to Trinidad in 1956 with her English husband, George. He has a three year contract with a shipping company. It’s an adventure, and they are young, happy, and confident that they will suceed where, it seems, many before them have failed.
George fell in love with Trinidad. The surroundings, the climate, the lifestyle.
Monique Roffey’s rich and evocative prose makes it easy to see why. But she describes a darker and more violent side to Trinidad too.
Sabine hates Trinidad: the heat, the humidity, the rigid social code of the ex pat community, the racial segregation. She accepts that she wil have to stay until the end of her husband’s contract, but she sees her future in England.
But George sees his future in Trinidad, and has no intention of returning to England. He would happily spend his whole life in Trinidad. And so the relationship between Sabine and George, inevitably, deteriorates. They continue to love each other deeply, but they many never understand each other.
And so Sabine is tied: she could leave Trinidad, but she could never leave George.
Meanwhile, the country is changing. And one day Sabine is caught up in a rally for a new political party, a party demanding an end to colonial rule and better things for the native people, as she rides her green bicycle to the market.
She starts to take an interest in the local politics, she argues with the other ex pat wives, and bonds grow between her and her family’s native maids. She will never love the country but she grows to love its people and hope for their future. And she writes letters to the new party’s leader, sharing her hopes, her fears, her concerns, her ideas. She knows that she will never be able to send them and so she stores them away.
Her husband though is her mirror image. He continues to love the country, but he will never be more than an ex pat and he will never understand, never even want to understand its people.
And years later George will find Sabine’s letters…
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is a powerful, complex, rich story of a woman, a marriage and a country. There are many details, many emotions, and each and every one rings true.
Many questions are posed. Some are answered, but others are too difficult.
The story is non chronological – the ending is seen first, through George’s eyes and then the past is revealed from Sabine’s point of view. And that works well, focusing attention on events and relationships as they unfold without the distraction of wondering where they are leading.
The language and the imagery are dark and dazzling, slowly but surely painting complex and vivid pictures of personal and political histories.
And the story is compelling.
Awonderful book!
April 27, 2010
Monique Roffey: A White Woman, A Green Bicycle, and the Orange Prize
It came as no surprise to me to hear Monique Roffey had been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for her novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle. As soon as I received it for review I knew I was in for a treat and I wasn’t disappointed. Roffey is surely one of the best women novelists around and this tale of Trinidad is as irresistible as her earlier work.
Her first novel, Sun Dog, tempted me to buy it after reading an excerpt. It’s not easy for a debut novelist to have this effect, but there was something about her fragile anti-hero as he discovered his body was changing with the seasons, sprouting buds between fingers and toes in Spring. I just had to read more and find out about this shy young man working in a delicatessen and rebelling against the commune upbringing he’d had with his hippy mother.
The White Woman on a Green Bicycle tempts the reader just as Sun Dog did. The lush landscape of Trinidad makes us feel we’re right there, or want to be there. In fact the green hills of Trinidad come so vividly to life that they actually speak to the characters and seduce them or inspire their envy.
It might be hard to imagine why one of the main characters, Sabine, doesn’t want to live there and craves the London suburban home her husband promised her if she would spend a bit of time in Trinidad while he establishes himself in his job. But, from the first days, Sabine is sensitive to the feeling that Trinidad doesn’t want her, doesn’t want the white people still living like the colonialists of the past. She’s both attracted to Trinidad and its people, and also pushed out due to her compassion and awareness. She agrees with the Trinidadians but she isn’t one of them so can’t rebel alongside them.
Her husband George is different. Like the other men sent there by businesses he can be important in Trinidad, can have a decent job, buy land and build his big house, and move on from the strong love he feels for his wife at the start through a series of affairs as the decades become more permissive. Gradually Sabine realises he will never keep his promise to take her home – this is his home. Her children are Creole and love the island, and she’s the only disappointed one: the one who doesn’t ever feel she fits in.
Roffey’s expertise is in telling this story from the point of view of both characters, Sabine and George, and keeping the reader’s empathy for both of them. In fact, we can tell that their love for each other has somehow survived. At the start of the book they’re both old and resigned to what their life has been, having given up on what they had hoped for, so I’ve given away none of the plot.
Instead of making the reader wait to see what happens we start at the end of their lives and the book lets us see back into various details. The first half of the novel is from George’s perspective, as an old man, wanting somehow to redeem himself in his wife’s eyes. The second half is told by the young Sabine from the time of her arrival on the island through the first decades of their marriage.
I particularly enjoy a book that tells me about the history of a country that I hadn’t known about, and Roffey does this in a masterful way. Not long after Sabine and George arrive the Trinidadians are roused to support the charismatic leader Eric Williams who promises to free them from the remnants of colonialism. Sabine is metaphorically seduced by him, empathising with the people, and is emotionally and physically aroused by the atmosphere he creates. I’ll say no more, and leave you to discover how Roffey weaves politics, landscape, the personal and the public figures so that the bigger picture and the smaller picture somehow work together.
If I have a criticism it’s that at times Roffey’s style can follow the day-to-day in such a realistic way that it’s possible to leave the book down and pick it up again weeks later. This happens in some chapters during the first half where we see George’s view of the marriage and Trinidad. Having said that, even his account is interspersed with vivid scenes including the beating of a black teenager by the local police that had me on the edge of my seat.
Once the story moves to Sabine’s perspective I couldn’t get enough of it. There’s always a risk when a novelist tells a story through two different viewpoints that the reader will prefer one to the other. Roffey has imagined life through the experience of both George and Sabine so well that it still feels like a major achievement, and no doubt many male readers will empathise more with George.
Compassion is a quality I look for in a novelist and Roffey certainly has it. She has written so that we can understand the history of Trinidad and this particular marriage, and she has done it without allocating blame so that we understand the reasons for the failures of individuals and even Eric Williams. The characters come to life in our minds and we remember them as if we knew them, and it’s as if we’ve been to Trinidad or want to go. It’s a novel that will stay in the mind like a memory of a real experience, and I highly recommend it.
It came as no surprise to me to hear Monique Roffey had been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for her novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle. As soon as I received it for review I knew I was in for a treat and I wasn’t disappointed. Roffey is surely one of the best women novelists around and this tale of Trinidad is as irresistible as her earlier work.
Her first novel, Sun Dog, tempted me to buy it after reading an excerpt. It’s not easy for a debut novelist to have this effect, but there was something about her fragile anti-hero as he discovered his body was changing with the seasons, sprouting buds between fingers and toes in Spring. I just had to read more and find out about this shy young man working in a delicatessen and rebelling against the commune upbringing he’d had with his hippy mother.
The White Woman on a Green Bicycle tempts the reader just as Sun Dog did. The lush landscape of Trinidad makes us feel we’re right there, or want to be there. In fact the green hills of Trinidad come so vividly to life that they actually speak to the characters and seduce them or inspire their envy.
It might be hard to imagine why one of the main characters, Sabine, doesn’t want to live there and craves the London suburban home her husband promised her if she would spend a bit of time in Trinidad while he establishes himself in his job. But, from the first days, Sabine is sensitive to the feeling that Trinidad doesn’t want her, doesn’t want the white people still living like the colonialists of the past. She’s both attracted to Trinidad and its people, and also pushed out due to her compassion and awareness. She agrees with the Trinidadians but she isn’t one of them so can’t rebel alongside them.
Her husband George is different. Like the other men sent there by businesses he can be important in Trinidad, can have a decent job, buy land and build his big house, and move on from the strong love he feels for his wife at the start through a series of affairs as the decades become more permissive. Gradually Sabine realises he will never keep his promise to take her home – this is his home. Her children are Creole and love the island, and she’s the only disappointed one: the one who doesn’t ever feel she fits in.
Roffey’s expertise is in telling this story from the point of view of both characters, Sabine and George, and keeping the reader’s empathy for both of them. In fact, we can tell that their love for each other has somehow survived. At the start of the book they’re both old and resigned to what their life has been, having given up on what they had hoped for, so I’ve given away none of the plot.
Instead of making the reader wait to see what happens we start at the end of their lives and the book lets us see back into various details. The first half of the novel is from George’s perspective, as an old man, wanting somehow to redeem himself in his wife’s eyes. The second half is told by the young Sabine from the time of her arrival on the island through the first decades of their marriage.
I particularly enjoy a book that tells me about the history of a country that I hadn’t known about, and Roffey does this in a masterful way. Not long after Sabine and George arrive the Trinidadians are roused to support the charismatic leader Eric Williams who promises to free them from the remnants of colonialism. Sabine is metaphorically seduced by him, empathising with the people, and is emotionally and physically aroused by the atmosphere he creates. I’ll say no more, and leave you to discover how Roffey weaves politics, landscape, the personal and the public figures so that the bigger picture and the smaller picture somehow work together.
If I have a criticism it’s that at times Roffey’s style can follow the day-to-day in such a realistic way that it’s possible to leave the book down and pick it up again weeks later. This happens in some chapters during the first half where we see George’s view of the marriage and Trinidad. Having said that, even his account is interspersed with vivid scenes including the beating of a black teenager by the local police that had me on the edge of my seat.
Once the story moves to Sabine’s perspective I couldn’t get enough of it. There’s always a risk when a novelist tells a story through two different viewpoints that the reader will prefer one to the other. Roffey has imagined life through the experience of both George and Sabine so well that it still feels like a major achievement, and no doubt many male readers will empathise more with George.
Compassion is a quality I look for in a novelist and Roffey certainly has it. She has written so that we can understand the history of Trinidad and this particular marriage, and she has done it without allocating blame so that we understand the reasons for the failures of individuals and even Eric Williams. The characters come to life in our minds and we remember them as if we knew them, and it’s as if we’ve been to Trinidad or want to go. It’s a novel that will stay in the mind like a memory of a real experience, and I highly recommend it.
April 6, 2021
There are some unusual characters in this book, all experience personal disappointments, although some can glory in past achievements. The story pulls in a lot of directions providing a glimpse of political corruption as well as social life after colonialism in Trinidad. Calypso and Soca music is sprinkled into the novel along with cricket.
February 17, 2021
Monique Roffey is a fine writer and her vivid descriptions of Trinidad make readers feel its tropical heat and lush ripeness. Trinidad is as much a character as the setting of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle. Readers are transported to this island (not too far from my birth place of St. Thomas) and observe its shifting political climate over the course of turbulent decades. The struggle for independence from the authority of Europeans is backdrop to the story of a rocky marriage that is up front and center. In the first section, the title character does a great deal of complaining and bemoaning her situation. I found it difficult to like or relate to this miserable woman. Even though her husband is no saint, at first he is the more tolerable of the two. Yes he's an alcoholic and a serial adulterer, one who in his older years does not bother to have mistresses but settles for prostitutes. But we also see decency in his dealings with people and root for his efforts to atone and win back his wife's affections. I don't want to divulge any spoilers so will simply say that after the dramatic conclusion of the first section, we are brought back in time to when the couple first arrives in Trinidad. They are much younger, more vibrant, seemingly deeply in love with each other, more open to giving things a chance. But while the husband is happy to be in Trinidad where he knows he can be far more successful than he would have been in England, his wife sees island life as a temporary necessity to experience, and then to endure. The cause of her unhappiness is the same from beginning to end, and she is honest about it all along. Her husband selfishly and dishonestly leads her to believe throughout the years that he has an exit strategy, that they will eventually be returning home. But in truth he feels that they already are home, and believes or at least hopes that his wife will come around in time. If she does not, his attitude eventually becomes - "so be it". Rum and women and professional achievement and growing wealth help him to deal with the aggravation of having a wife who hates where she is yet will not or cannot leave. Time marches on and revolution is in the air. If the Trinidadians achieve the freedom they long for, perhaps the woman on the green bicycle will get what she desires as well. But she is waiting for this outcome to happen, not making it occur by taking action. She does not attempt to change her circumstances but instead suffers them noisily, as well as quietly in letters she writes but does not send to a politician. The book draws to a close as the day of her personal emancipation seemingly draws near, but we know it must be a mirage because we have already learned from the first part of the book which takes place in later years that Trinidad will not let loose of its grip on her fate. Not everybody can enjoy a book that is about someone who holds a little less hope and a little more bitterness with each passing day. By the end, which returns us full circle to the book's beginning, she is relentlessly resigned to her fate. But that doesn't mean her bicycle doesn't have one last ride left in it. This is by no means an uplifting tale, but it is well written and I am happy to have discovered this sad book. If demonstrates the profound truth of the cliche that the grass is always greener. Somewhere a woman sits in her modest apartment in some bustling city on a cold winter's day, staring out the window, wishing she was sipping margaritas in a bathing suit on a tropical island. Somewhere else another woman lives a life of leisure on a provincial island that she would be happy to visit on vacation, but is miserable being there indefinitely because it will never feel like home.
June 25, 2011
Monique Roffey's The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is a book that doesn't seem to know what to do with itself; it has ideas, but it declares this so openly that no part of the novel is allowed to naturally take root in the reader's mind. Roffey's novel, about a couple from England, Sabine and George, living in Trinidad, opens with the pair in their seventies, entrenched in what seems a decades-long loathing of one another, an obsession with their physical decline, and an endless rehashing of memories and perceived slights. This section of the story, told in the third person, takes up nearly half of the novel.
Roffey's decision to open the novel with this overlong segment is baffling. Sabine and George are revealed to the reader, but they're never really shown to us; or rather, they never show us who they are. Sabine is at the center of the first section, as she is at the center of the novel as a whole, but she is never developed well enough that she can carry this weight. Rather, Roffey attempts to make Sabine a compelling character through a sort of trickery, by telling us that other characters find something to look at in her. There's her and George's focus on her physical decline, "its runaway curves and generous swells", as a means of establishing that Sabine and the island are in competition for her husband's affections - the "island [that] flexed its charms, laughed in her face as she withered." There's the way that everyone around her, her daughter, her servants, her husband, recall Sabine and how she rode her green bicycle around Trinidad when they were newly arrived, when she thought she would be in the country for three years rather than for the rest of her life. There's the way they all, of them, tie Sabine and the green bicycle and Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, together in the manner that Roffey evidently wants the reader to.
The way characters in The White Woman on the Green Bicycle remember reads as false, because their memories are so tightly focused on what Roffey wants the reader to focus on: who Sabine was, who she became. Nothing in this novel is allowed to be insignificant, and in limiting the aspects of her characters we see, Roffey gives only the sense that these characters are only partially drawn, that they only exist so far as they can serve Roffey's vision of a novel about the end of the colonial era in Trinidad.
The second half of the novel, divided into three sections focusing on the years following Sabine and George's arrival in Trinidad, are stronger than the first section - but not so strong that they can recover the novel. The way Sabine becomes tangled up in Trinidad, first thinking she and George will stay just for their three-year contract, then a little longer, then realizing that she has no way of supporting herself should she leave Trinidad without George, reads claustrophobically. Knowing, as we do, that Sabine will still be in Trinidad in her seventies, it is sometimes painful to read her desire to return to England; but Roffey is heavy-handed even here, as she foreshadows for Sabine the future we readers already know.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle at times does a remarkable job capturing the feel of Trinidad, Sabine's sense of being out of place in a foreign culture that is in the process of rejecting people with her skin color, and the language of Trinidad. It fails, though, in developing characters that can match the landscape surrounding them.
Roffey's decision to open the novel with this overlong segment is baffling. Sabine and George are revealed to the reader, but they're never really shown to us; or rather, they never show us who they are. Sabine is at the center of the first section, as she is at the center of the novel as a whole, but she is never developed well enough that she can carry this weight. Rather, Roffey attempts to make Sabine a compelling character through a sort of trickery, by telling us that other characters find something to look at in her. There's her and George's focus on her physical decline, "its runaway curves and generous swells", as a means of establishing that Sabine and the island are in competition for her husband's affections - the "island [that] flexed its charms, laughed in her face as she withered." There's the way that everyone around her, her daughter, her servants, her husband, recall Sabine and how she rode her green bicycle around Trinidad when they were newly arrived, when she thought she would be in the country for three years rather than for the rest of her life. There's the way they all, of them, tie Sabine and the green bicycle and Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, together in the manner that Roffey evidently wants the reader to.
The way characters in The White Woman on the Green Bicycle remember reads as false, because their memories are so tightly focused on what Roffey wants the reader to focus on: who Sabine was, who she became. Nothing in this novel is allowed to be insignificant, and in limiting the aspects of her characters we see, Roffey gives only the sense that these characters are only partially drawn, that they only exist so far as they can serve Roffey's vision of a novel about the end of the colonial era in Trinidad.
The second half of the novel, divided into three sections focusing on the years following Sabine and George's arrival in Trinidad, are stronger than the first section - but not so strong that they can recover the novel. The way Sabine becomes tangled up in Trinidad, first thinking she and George will stay just for their three-year contract, then a little longer, then realizing that she has no way of supporting herself should she leave Trinidad without George, reads claustrophobically. Knowing, as we do, that Sabine will still be in Trinidad in her seventies, it is sometimes painful to read her desire to return to England; but Roffey is heavy-handed even here, as she foreshadows for Sabine the future we readers already know.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle at times does a remarkable job capturing the feel of Trinidad, Sabine's sense of being out of place in a foreign culture that is in the process of rejecting people with her skin color, and the language of Trinidad. It fails, though, in developing characters that can match the landscape surrounding them.
March 26, 2021
I have finally gotten around to reading The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey. About ten years ago, this book was EVERYWHERE and it was always on my list of books to read.
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The focus of the novel is white couple George and Sabine Harwood. We first meet the married couple as older folks in 2006 Trinidad. Their already turbulent relationship is upended when George discovers boxes of letters which Sabine wrote to the country's first Prime Minister Eric Williams but never sent.
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'George has gone mad,' Sabine writes. 'He sleeps with other women, flaunts his charms. All this has gone to his head. He owns land, he's head of the company now. People here laugh at George behind his back. A grand blanc - like those In Haiti once who went power-crazy with their little kingdoms.'
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Indeed, George's white skin made an average man like him exceptional in Trinidad. After its opening, the novel jumps back in time to 1956 so readers can see the privileges of George's whiteness and the ways the insular white community enforce their own versions of racial segregation. Sabine herself, although more perceptive than George, also takes refuge in bastions of whiteness despite feeling the weight of history and the monstrous unfairness of her unearned privilege.
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I wasn't expecting a colourful cast of real life Trinidadian characters, fictionalised but still so familiar to me. There's our record smashing cricketer Brian Lara, the calypso king of the world, the Mighty Sparrow and of course Eric Williams. Williams, in particular, looms large as a one time revolutionary and Black rights campaigner whose proximity to power corrodes him.
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I'm so glad that I finally read this book.
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The focus of the novel is white couple George and Sabine Harwood. We first meet the married couple as older folks in 2006 Trinidad. Their already turbulent relationship is upended when George discovers boxes of letters which Sabine wrote to the country's first Prime Minister Eric Williams but never sent.
📖
'George has gone mad,' Sabine writes. 'He sleeps with other women, flaunts his charms. All this has gone to his head. He owns land, he's head of the company now. People here laugh at George behind his back. A grand blanc - like those In Haiti once who went power-crazy with their little kingdoms.'
📖
Indeed, George's white skin made an average man like him exceptional in Trinidad. After its opening, the novel jumps back in time to 1956 so readers can see the privileges of George's whiteness and the ways the insular white community enforce their own versions of racial segregation. Sabine herself, although more perceptive than George, also takes refuge in bastions of whiteness despite feeling the weight of history and the monstrous unfairness of her unearned privilege.
📖
I wasn't expecting a colourful cast of real life Trinidadian characters, fictionalised but still so familiar to me. There's our record smashing cricketer Brian Lara, the calypso king of the world, the Mighty Sparrow and of course Eric Williams. Williams, in particular, looms large as a one time revolutionary and Black rights campaigner whose proximity to power corrodes him.
📖
I'm so glad that I finally read this book.
October 18, 2023
Hands down the best book I have listened to this year as I work through a number of books about South America. BEST. The narration is absolutely incredible. I would have had no idea Trinidad had so many accents; the people who speak them were surprising to me. Also, the narrator manages to voice the same character, years apart, by speaking with a young-ladies-voice in half the novel, and an old-ladies-voice in the rest. I am in awe.
Trinidad is just a few kilometers off of the Venezuelan coast and I had not understood anything of its history nor anything else about it until reading the White Woman on the Green Bicycle. The story did not grab me right away, and then I got hit by a tractor trailer and stopped reading for many months, but when I got back I was absolutely enraptured and could not stop reading. Interwoven within a beautifully described tale, are tidbits about the history of Trinidad....so that I now feel like I know quite a bit about this fascinating place.
Trinidad is just a few kilometers off of the Venezuelan coast and I had not understood anything of its history nor anything else about it until reading the White Woman on the Green Bicycle. The story did not grab me right away, and then I got hit by a tractor trailer and stopped reading for many months, but when I got back I was absolutely enraptured and could not stop reading. Interwoven within a beautifully described tale, are tidbits about the history of Trinidad....so that I now feel like I know quite a bit about this fascinating place.
April 18, 2010
This novel begins in contemporary Trinidad, and its main character is Sabine Harwood, a French woman who has been married to her handsome but mediocre English husband George for 50 years. At the beginning of their marriage she agreed to move to Trinidad with him for a three year period, so long as they could move back to the UK after his contract ended. George instantly fell in love with the island, as he was able to make a place for himself as a white man with little competition in a segregated society, and he took full advantage of its numerous temptations. Sabine finds herself trapped in this restrictive class- and color-conscious society, but George ignores her desperate pleas and threats to leave the island with their two children.
Sabine is captivated by the fiery Eric Williams, an Oxford educated black Trinidadian who becomes the first prime minister of independent Trinidad & Tobago. Williams is enraptured after seeing the attractive Sabine ride her bicycle in Port-of-Spain, and the two eventually meet. Sabine begins to collect newspaper clippings about Williams and writes letters to him, which express her hopes for the new country, and the frustrations of her life and marriage. She keeps these letters in boxes, which are never sent to him.
George finds these letters accidentally, and finally realizes that she no longer loves him, and has grown to despise him. He is heartbroken, and decides to win her back, by proving his love to her in a risky act that ends tragically.
Most of the remainder of the novel is set in the early 1960s, during the first years of independence, as the relationship between Sabine and George slowly unwinds. At the same time, the hopes and dreams that Trinidadians have for their new leader fade, as his government becomes more insulated and less responsive to the people's needs.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle was an interesting and well written read, which gave a rich portrayal of postcolonial Trinidad and its people. However, several aspects of the characters of George and Sabine were baffling to me, as I couldn't understand how he could be so infuriatingly clueless towards his wife's repeated pleas, and why Sabine insisted in staying alongside him for as long as she did. The novel also ends abruptly, in a somewhat confusing and unexpected manner. Despite this, I still enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Trinidad and its people.
Sabine is captivated by the fiery Eric Williams, an Oxford educated black Trinidadian who becomes the first prime minister of independent Trinidad & Tobago. Williams is enraptured after seeing the attractive Sabine ride her bicycle in Port-of-Spain, and the two eventually meet. Sabine begins to collect newspaper clippings about Williams and writes letters to him, which express her hopes for the new country, and the frustrations of her life and marriage. She keeps these letters in boxes, which are never sent to him.
George finds these letters accidentally, and finally realizes that she no longer loves him, and has grown to despise him. He is heartbroken, and decides to win her back, by proving his love to her in a risky act that ends tragically.
Most of the remainder of the novel is set in the early 1960s, during the first years of independence, as the relationship between Sabine and George slowly unwinds. At the same time, the hopes and dreams that Trinidadians have for their new leader fade, as his government becomes more insulated and less responsive to the people's needs.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle was an interesting and well written read, which gave a rich portrayal of postcolonial Trinidad and its people. However, several aspects of the characters of George and Sabine were baffling to me, as I couldn't understand how he could be so infuriatingly clueless towards his wife's repeated pleas, and why Sabine insisted in staying alongside him for as long as she did. The novel also ends abruptly, in a somewhat confusing and unexpected manner. Despite this, I still enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Trinidad and its people.
July 24, 2010
I originally bought this on a binge induced by the release of the Orange Prize for Fiction (UK) shortlist 2010 as the books were *ahem* on offer but I was really taken by the idea of a story exploring the background of Trinidad - a country I would admit I know little about.
What I will give this book credit for is it's incredible descriptions of either a wildly compelling Trinidad or a hot and oppressive Trinidad. The scenery was beautiful and by far my favourite aspect of the book. The local characters' speech is written in a local dialect too which is very atmospheric.
It does, however, suffer from being somewhat too long for its own characters. George staunchly plays the ignorant husband while Sabine plays downtrodden wife and...well, that's it. The story as told in 2006 is not nearly as colourful as the prologue would suggest and the characterisation is poor, aside from that of Trinidad itself. Now, here it depends on why you read but I like to be able to identify with and, hell, like at least one of the protagonists. It does become much more readable once it switches to the first person narrative in 1956 and you begin to understand how the characters started out but even that wore on after a while.
Overall:
Stick with it if you want to know more about the politics and history of Trinidad - that really is interesting! Just don't hold out for a gripping storyline or lovable characters...
What I will give this book credit for is it's incredible descriptions of either a wildly compelling Trinidad or a hot and oppressive Trinidad. The scenery was beautiful and by far my favourite aspect of the book. The local characters' speech is written in a local dialect too which is very atmospheric.
It does, however, suffer from being somewhat too long for its own characters. George staunchly plays the ignorant husband while Sabine plays downtrodden wife and...well, that's it. The story as told in 2006 is not nearly as colourful as the prologue would suggest and the characterisation is poor, aside from that of Trinidad itself. Now, here it depends on why you read but I like to be able to identify with and, hell, like at least one of the protagonists. It does become much more readable once it switches to the first person narrative in 1956 and you begin to understand how the characters started out but even that wore on after a while.
Overall:
Stick with it if you want to know more about the politics and history of Trinidad - that really is interesting! Just don't hold out for a gripping storyline or lovable characters...
April 11, 2020
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
‘My green bicycle. Remember it?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Arriving from the hold. People laughed when they saw it.’
‘Yes.’
‘I travelled everywhere on that bike – at first. Didn’t I?’
‘I remember it well.’
Often, Sabine would arrive at the dock to meet him after work. Her shorts revealed long, slim, honey-coloured legs. A halter-neck top, Dior sunglasses. Blonde curls. Every man behind her stopped dead in their tracks to watch her pass.
‘Riding round the savannah, I liked that.’
‘Holding up traffic with those legs.’
‘I saw Trinidad on that bike. You know . . . saw the sights.’
‘And you were seen, my love.’ George smiled. ‘Don’t we still have that old thing, somewhere?’
She nodded carefully.
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere.’
October 13, 2020
2.5 stars. Well this wasn't awfully written, it could have been a very compelling story. I just didn't enjoy my time with it, can't really put my finger on why.
June 18, 2021
4.5 A phenomenal novel set in Trinidad about social and political turmoil, a rocky marriage, and Sabines love/hate relationship with the island. Enjoyed the audio narration immensely.
April 17, 2012
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is a back-to-front book. The first part is chronologically the last, and even before the story really begins we know the tragic end; but foreknowledge is exactly the prod that keeps the reader reading. How, why, did it all go so terribly wrong?
When George and Sabine Harwood, flushed with the glow of a new marriage, arrive in Port of Spain, Trinidad in the mid-1950’s, an Other Woman steps into their life and casts a spell on George. Sabine is powerless against her, for she is not of flesh and blood, but of fertile earth and tangled foliage, of crashing sea and moody sky. The undulating green mountains around their home symbolise, for Sabine, the seductive island Trinidad: her voluptuous curves, the abundant foliage of her hair, her vibrant Creole voice. The green woman Trinidad steals not only her husband but her children and her life.
Sabine hates her rival Trinidad and pines for England. But her love for George is fierce as a hurricane, and she endures the daily vexations for his sake, trusting that their stay is only temporary. She tries to adapt, and riding her green bicycle around the capital’s streets becomes a familiar figure to the locals. Finding herself in an animated crowd listening to Eric Williams, the charismatic political leader, she falls as much under his spell as the restless Trinidadians, and recognises him as not only the island’s saviour but, perhaps, her own.
As George drifts ever more into the arms of the green woman Sabine begins a secret life of her own, driven by her fascination with Williams. Williams proves to have feet of clay and Trinidad erupts into racial violence; the green woman shows her claws. The Harwoods themselves become targets, and George finally agrees to flee.
Decades later, Sabine’s box of secrets surfaces and George makes a last desperate attempt to save his marriage. But the green woman proves as wily and as powerful as ever…
Subtly weaving truth into fiction, Trinidadian-born Monique Roffey has created a captivating roman-a-clef in which Trinidadians will recognise several real-life characters, both as themselves and in disguise. In eloquent, sometimes poetic, always passionate prose, she paints an intriguing and sometimes disturbing picture of Trinidad in the turbulent post-colonial era. Forget the cliché of white Caribbean sands, turquoise sea and cloudless blue skies; Roffey leads unerringly into the dark areas, slavery’s shadow. When racism begets racism it’s time for the hard questions, and this riveting story of a marriage as it crash-lands asks them fearlessly… but subtly, for Trinidad will seduce the reader as much as she does George.
When George and Sabine Harwood, flushed with the glow of a new marriage, arrive in Port of Spain, Trinidad in the mid-1950’s, an Other Woman steps into their life and casts a spell on George. Sabine is powerless against her, for she is not of flesh and blood, but of fertile earth and tangled foliage, of crashing sea and moody sky. The undulating green mountains around their home symbolise, for Sabine, the seductive island Trinidad: her voluptuous curves, the abundant foliage of her hair, her vibrant Creole voice. The green woman Trinidad steals not only her husband but her children and her life.
Sabine hates her rival Trinidad and pines for England. But her love for George is fierce as a hurricane, and she endures the daily vexations for his sake, trusting that their stay is only temporary. She tries to adapt, and riding her green bicycle around the capital’s streets becomes a familiar figure to the locals. Finding herself in an animated crowd listening to Eric Williams, the charismatic political leader, she falls as much under his spell as the restless Trinidadians, and recognises him as not only the island’s saviour but, perhaps, her own.
As George drifts ever more into the arms of the green woman Sabine begins a secret life of her own, driven by her fascination with Williams. Williams proves to have feet of clay and Trinidad erupts into racial violence; the green woman shows her claws. The Harwoods themselves become targets, and George finally agrees to flee.
Decades later, Sabine’s box of secrets surfaces and George makes a last desperate attempt to save his marriage. But the green woman proves as wily and as powerful as ever…
Subtly weaving truth into fiction, Trinidadian-born Monique Roffey has created a captivating roman-a-clef in which Trinidadians will recognise several real-life characters, both as themselves and in disguise. In eloquent, sometimes poetic, always passionate prose, she paints an intriguing and sometimes disturbing picture of Trinidad in the turbulent post-colonial era. Forget the cliché of white Caribbean sands, turquoise sea and cloudless blue skies; Roffey leads unerringly into the dark areas, slavery’s shadow. When racism begets racism it’s time for the hard questions, and this riveting story of a marriage as it crash-lands asks them fearlessly… but subtly, for Trinidad will seduce the reader as much as she does George.
Read
July 23, 2011I can honestly say that I began this book very tentatively. As a Trinidadian living overseas, I am keenly familiar with the impact of negative stereotyping and ignorance on how peoples and nations are perceived. I honestly did not wish to read a novel that in any way bought into any false representation of my country and its beautiful, progressive, intelligent, fun loving, hard working people! I was also a bit weary of mixing fact with fiction in the way that was done here. It is so easy to simply believe the printed word when fact as so close to the fiction. So many reviews I have read both here and on other sites claim that this book has enabled them to 'understand Trinidad better' and I shudder at that. I know that when I read historical fiction, I usually find myself researching the what's true and what's not behind the story - not sure everyone else is that thorough...or that interested. Easier to believe that the Trinidad in the book is the Trinidad that IS.
That said, I really appreciated certain aspects of the book. I grew up in a family within which Eric Williams was held in VERY high esteem (in spite of his faults - which were not ignored). I myself do not believe Trinidad has had another leader with such a commanding presence. So, it was really interesting to imagine him without the political backdrop. The Author does a fantastic job of bringing that fantasy Williams to life! In addition, my regular middle-class family did not embrace either of the extreme positions the book alludes to when it describes the black power movement, so reading an imagined perspective of the 'grass roots' Trini alongside the imagined perspective of the expat, was also quite interesting - neither perspectives had I ever really encountered before.
Sabine's love hate relationship with the Island is also quite gripping. She clearly in her own way, loves the island. She knows the sights, sounds, smells, even the accents etc and this really captivated me, especially given her desire to leave, her loathing of the heat and her conversations with the hills - the conflict was beautifully and subtly done!
The real hole for me was Sabine and George's relationship - more could have been there. I was not sure why she loved him so much and vice versa....
All in all a pretty good read that I have and would recommend. Non Trinis, do apply the proverbial 'gain of salt'!
I
I
That said, I really appreciated certain aspects of the book. I grew up in a family within which Eric Williams was held in VERY high esteem (in spite of his faults - which were not ignored). I myself do not believe Trinidad has had another leader with such a commanding presence. So, it was really interesting to imagine him without the political backdrop. The Author does a fantastic job of bringing that fantasy Williams to life! In addition, my regular middle-class family did not embrace either of the extreme positions the book alludes to when it describes the black power movement, so reading an imagined perspective of the 'grass roots' Trini alongside the imagined perspective of the expat, was also quite interesting - neither perspectives had I ever really encountered before.
Sabine's love hate relationship with the Island is also quite gripping. She clearly in her own way, loves the island. She knows the sights, sounds, smells, even the accents etc and this really captivated me, especially given her desire to leave, her loathing of the heat and her conversations with the hills - the conflict was beautifully and subtly done!
The real hole for me was Sabine and George's relationship - more could have been there. I was not sure why she loved him so much and vice versa....
All in all a pretty good read that I have and would recommend. Non Trinis, do apply the proverbial 'gain of salt'!
I
I
November 29, 2010
A steamy tropical paradise.
It took me a little while to get into this book. The ending is at the beginning so we know from the start that Goerge's love of Trinidad wins over Sabine's desperate need to return home. My interest was sufficiently piqued, however, to find out what went on in the intervening years, why Sabine was writing unsent letters to Eric Williams and who he was.
But I think, at the end of the day, that I too, fell under the spell of the island, I didn't want Sabine to persuade George to return home - I could hear the call of the cycadas, feel the moisture in the air, and wanted to stay.
When Sabine and George arrive at Port of Spain, they are newly wed and ready to spend a couple of years having an 'adventure', before starting up home in Britain. George has a short term contract and they intend to return when it is completed. It is not long, however, before Sabine starts to suspect that George has other ideas, may even have had them before he arrived. His contract is renewed and he starts to build a house, he even adopts Trinidadian nationality. Sabine doesn't stand a chance.
I could really identify with their first impressions - their first home, the hot weather and the strangeness of it all - it reminded me so much of my early days as an expat in Dubai. And expat life does not suit everyone; Sabine was an excellent representation of that.
In addition this was a work of historical fiction, covering the period of time from the 1950's when Trinidad and Tobago became independent of Britain and underwent the awkward, tense, transition into a new country. The majority of expats returned home but still Sabine and George never quite managed to leave.
A very atmospheric book with excellent characters. Well worth a read, especially if you enjoy international fiction.
It took me a little while to get into this book. The ending is at the beginning so we know from the start that Goerge's love of Trinidad wins over Sabine's desperate need to return home. My interest was sufficiently piqued, however, to find out what went on in the intervening years, why Sabine was writing unsent letters to Eric Williams and who he was.
But I think, at the end of the day, that I too, fell under the spell of the island, I didn't want Sabine to persuade George to return home - I could hear the call of the cycadas, feel the moisture in the air, and wanted to stay.
When Sabine and George arrive at Port of Spain, they are newly wed and ready to spend a couple of years having an 'adventure', before starting up home in Britain. George has a short term contract and they intend to return when it is completed. It is not long, however, before Sabine starts to suspect that George has other ideas, may even have had them before he arrived. His contract is renewed and he starts to build a house, he even adopts Trinidadian nationality. Sabine doesn't stand a chance.
I could really identify with their first impressions - their first home, the hot weather and the strangeness of it all - it reminded me so much of my early days as an expat in Dubai. And expat life does not suit everyone; Sabine was an excellent representation of that.
In addition this was a work of historical fiction, covering the period of time from the 1950's when Trinidad and Tobago became independent of Britain and underwent the awkward, tense, transition into a new country. The majority of expats returned home but still Sabine and George never quite managed to leave.
A very atmospheric book with excellent characters. Well worth a read, especially if you enjoy international fiction.
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