Left at the Mango Tree

by Stephanie Siciarz

LEFT AT THE MANGO TREE is the story of Almondine Orlean. Almondine is white. Everyone else on the island of Oh is black. Things like that happen there. The moon plays tricks. The leaves sing. And one day the island itself summons home the grown-up Almondine to piece together her black-and-white past. She will reconstruct the efforts of her grandfather—a book-loving, magic-hating, Customs and Excise Officer named Raoul—to explain his new white grandbaby, a case of island magic if ever there was. As Raoul struggles to prove otherwise (for surely otherwise it has to be!), Oh’s pineapples begin to disappear. Acres without a trace, and Officer Raoul must find out how and why. With help and hindrance from his favorite novel and his three real-life chums, Raoul will risk his reputation, his sanity, and even his life, to solve not one island riddle but two—and to reveal, if he dare, the secrets hidden between the shady mango and the shiny moon.

Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2013.
Shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize.

294 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2013

About the author

Stephanie Siciarz was born in the US and is a graduate of Georgetown University and The Johns Hopkins University. She is a writer and translator and has worked for high-ranking officials in international, government, and academic institutions in the US and Europe. She currently resides in Ohio, where she is on the faculty at Kent State University. Left at the Mango Tree (October 2013), her first novel, was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2013. Her latest novel, Rum for the Pineapple Cup, was released in December 2016.

Reviews

[Chrystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout my reading of this shining debut novel, I felt like I was dancing.

The dance, it turns out, is the Island of Oh.

Through Siciarz's superb writing Oh breathes. It lives at the macro scale, comprised of ocean waters and currents, sandy shores, inland streams, undulating landscapes, whispering leaves on swaying trees - and people. All respond to the seemingly fickle, sometimes cantankerous, other times playful movements of sun, moon, rain and wind.

No surprise that the Islanders' lives mirror Oh's rhythms, merging and serving counterpoint within the dance.

Stunning, however, is the gorgeous writing that makes the dance of Oh so evident. While absorbing Siciarz's lyrical language, I felt responses deep in my gut, Oh's rhythms twitching my muscles and bobbing my head. (More than once I resisted overt movements, lest other people spy me leaning fore or aft, port or starboard.)

From the first page, Oh captures the disembarking passenger:

When you arrive at Oh, they don’t stamp your passport. You make your way bovinely through zigs and zags of blue plastic rope that navigate the gritty concrete of the airport floor, a sandpaper sea emptying into the river of Raoul. Behind the Formica counter from which he draws his authority, Raoul is an impressive sight. Flanked and backed by wooden cratefuls of pineapple, his black skin shines with subtle sweat against the pallor of the plywood slats, while the dull metal of his rounded specs vaguely obtrudes, like an artist’s signature on still life. His close-cropped hair and pronounced but gentle features foreshadow his demeanor, pointedly official, but given to flights of unofficial tolerance.

You reach his post, dulled by the sight, the scent, the oddity of the scene, and extend your passport with the trepidation of one who desires what another has the power to refuse. Raoul takes the document and thumbs the pages. He glances at you, at your picture, and back at you again. This he does less to verify your identity than to ponder how it is you came to be from where you’re from. Were it only as simple as a passport!

When he’s satisfied, he types your name on a carbon-paper form in his typewriter that records your arrival, date of birth, and eye color in triplicate, which he prises from the roller’s grip with an impatient “aaah.” He removes the dry end of an ink stamp from between his teeth and expels a “huh, huh” as he pounds it first onto his inkpad and then onto your triplicate form one time. Then in a single, masterful sleight of hand, Raoul completes the transaction, and you find yourself, passport and creased copy three in your left palm, a pineapple in your right. And so to the rhythmic aaah-huh-huhs of Raoul the line slowly scrapes forward, his airy triads punctuated with a My word! or a What’s this? or a hesitant Thank you very much….

From collecting one's baggage and exiting the airport - where one meets Bang, a Pineapple-cutter extraordinaire -, to riding stickily (the pineapple) from airport to town in a taxicab driven by Nat, another featured character, Oh has the reader in its thrall.

The mystery that weaves throughout the novel cleaves no less to the rhythms and fickleness of Oh's moods than do its individual characters. And its ultimate resolution, while too coincidental to be believed had the mystery occurred in a city setting, makes perfect sense on the island of Oh, whose internally consistent rhythms must be honoured.

Siciarz has written a second novel, Away with the Fishes , which also takes place on Oh and involves another mystery.

I shall be making the return trip. The author's superb writing, wondrous language, enchanting storytelling and fully-imagined world are too much for this reader to resist.

[Frank Vetro · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was the first fiction book I ever read. What immediately became apparent was Siciarz mastery of the language. Her use of highly descriptive words transported me to the Island of Oh. The more I read the more I felt I was actually on the island and the more I thought I personally knew the characters. The way Siciarz developed Almondine’s character made me feel as if I was with her in her quest, and the more determined I was to solve her mystery with her. I could not have picked a better book as my first fiction read.

[Lora Dudding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky characters, quirky plot strings you along making you wonder how this will be resolved. It gets there and the author pulls it off. Through the rain and the silvery moonlight, it comes together, it all connects and finally makes sense.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intelligent.

[Cheryl]

Almondine Orlean has been a bit of a conundrum since the minute she was born. White, that is, to black parents. On the island of Oh, they take every oddity as some sort of magic.. good, bad, or indifferent. Whispered about most of her childhood, she takes off for unknowing terrain once of age. But sagely knows “you can’t know where you’re meant to be going, if you don’t first make out where you’ve been.”

The character introductions are long and in-depth and most appreciated, as you will know exactly who the author is referring to as the story goes on.

The island of Oh is an island of pineapples. Nearly as abundant as the sand on its beaches, there are the spiny fruits. So, when one farmer notices his livelihood disappear, en masse, it’s time for the island’s #1 investor to get to work. Almondine’s grandfather, Raoul. He, along with buddies, Bang, the crooner extraordinaire, Nat, the island cabbie, and Cougar, a resort owner, will pile their ideas together over drinks and get to the bottom of the matter.

In a backstory into the courtship of Edda and Wilbur, Almondine’s parents, there is also one into Gustave. Gustave’s family are all albinos, himself included. They all have the same mole in the same place on their face. That Almondine, also albino, would also have it is what sets tongues wagging and speculations stirring. Gustave’s family is said to have magic and many of the island show a fearful respect, due to such. A loner, he is seldom seen among other residents.

Capers begin and Raoul sets out to investigate, in his own oddball way, all that he must. When his best friends are found to be involved, it sets a new thought process for him. But in his madcap way, he always gets the job done in the end, but still left in the dark as to the trueness of Almondine's heritage. But it seems not to matter, after all, when love prevails. Secrets are told as needed, bonds made and kept. That is the true magic of Oh.

In a poetic flair, Stephanie Siciarz deftly laces loose intricacies of life and lore as beautiful as the island she writes of, overflowing with pineapples and quirkiness. If only it truly existed.