Hadriana dans tous mes rêves

by René Depestre

Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.

Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality. The reader comes away enchanted by the marvelous reality of Haiti's Vodou culture and convinced of Depestre's lusty claim that all beings--even the undead ones--have a right to happiness and true love.

From the introduction by Edwidge Danticat:
Despestre offers us the kind of tale we rarely get in the hundreds of zombie stories featuring Haitians, stories set both inside and outside of Haiti. In Hadriana in All My Dreams we get both langaj--the secret language of Haitian Vodou--as well as the type of descriptive, elegiac, erotic, and satirical language, and the artistic license needed to create this most nuanced and powerful novel.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Zombies, Novella

224 pages, Pocket Book

First published March 11, 1988

About the author

René Depestre (born 29 August 1926 Jacmel, Haiti) is a Haitian poet and former communist activist. He is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in Haitian literature. He lived in Cuba as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Elizabeth (Plant Based Bride) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Country 43/199 for my Reading Around the World challenge: Haiti!

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[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new translation from Akashic Books left the translator with the challenge of finding more words for body parts! I enjoyed this completely bizarre novel set in Haiti with a corpse grandmother, sex-addict butterflies, and the central zombie bride. Voodoo and island traditions saturate the novel and the author communicates the story in three different styles. At first I was completely lost and had no idea what was going on, but just went with it and let it swirl around me.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy through Edelweiss.

[lark benobi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to settle into this book, in that it relies perhaps on a shared cultural knowledge I don't have...but once I gave up on understanding every bit of what was going on (for instance, what the heck was going on with Germaine Villaret-Joyeuse's "loins?") it entranced me. Some books cast as wide a net for readers as possible, and make themselves accessible to readers who don't share the author's culture, and other books are for sharing within a culture, author to reader, both with a shared history that needs no explanation. This novel was the latter, but I enjoyed being an outsider, looking in.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful parable story on Hadriana Siloé, a 18-year-old (white) French girl that lives in Jacmel (Southern Haiti) and on the day of her wedding seems to drop dead before the altar. After that she leads a so-called zombie-existence and especially pursues the author on his long voyage away from his homeland.
This novel contains many surrealist elements, drawn from the Haitian imagination. It's also a very interesting documentary about the zombie phenomenon and about the clash between Catholicism and voodoo.

[dianne b. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do the undead deserve true love?
This fascinating, oneiric book written by an important Haitian writer is (to me) completely unique. Hadriana - a French girl of unequaled beauty - is about to marry a Haitian boy - a pilot. But she drops “dead” at the altar. The Carnival-like festivities that had been scheduled go on anyway in place of a wake, and the description of this bizarre and magical celebration is fantastic. This Pagan vs Catholic, life vs death, joy vs grief party? funeral? is brilliantly rendered & parts are hilarious. Scenes of be-wimpled nuns next to gorgeous, dancing, naked women, are a feast for the imagination.

The day after Hadriana's burial, her casket is empty.

She enters into legend. Speaking of her white, French parents who had moved to Jacmel - a colorful town on the southern coast of Haiti:
“....the Jacmelians - with their necrophilic imagination - had incorporated their daughter into some sort of fairy tale. The disappearance of her body from the grave was the final episode in this leap into an imaginary world that was straining to grapple with fear and death. It was the tribute that their misfortune was obliged to pay to the magical identity of their adopted country.”

Hadriana becomes an obsession to our narrator who leads a peripatetic life, believing that this woman - the woman of his dreams - had been turned into a zombie. He spends a great deal of time over the ensuing decades reconstructing the events of that day in his attempt to understand what transpired, including the writing of an intellectual treatise about zombies and Haiti and race and sex:
“Haiti, like other “discovered” lands of the Americas, entered into modern history caught up in this game of masks (white, black, Indian, mulatto, etc.) - that is to say with a false identity. At the very bottom of the pit that is the reification of men, within the boundaries of death and the separation of the passions, at the tail end of the tragedy of being, is where one encounters the existential time and place of the zombie....his life having been cut literally in two, his gros bon ange of muscular effort condemned to forced labor in perpetuity and his petite bon ange of knowledge and enlightenment, of innocence and imagination, forever exiled in the first empty bottle within reach.”

A highly recommended read for anyone interested in the daily mysteries, the quotidian surrealism, of life.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the southern Haitian town of Jacmel during Carnival 1938, this magical story centers around Hadriana Siloé, a young woman who mysteriously dies in the middle of her wedding ceremony. There's a rapacious butterfly, vodou lemonade, and a young man who always remembers his first love. The story is told in first person accounts, letters, and diaries. It's very erotic - the translator even notes that she ran out of English words for all the French anatomical phrases used in the original text!

Not all is revealed in the story, and I liked that. It is a dreamy and atmospheric book that will stay with me long after finishing.

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Hadriana is technically a "zombie" tale, it's nothing like the typical zombie tale most modern-day Americans would envision. This is a mix of vodou, clashing with the colonial settlements/religion, a boisterous Haitian carnival celebrating life, death (or not-death), & sex. It's somber, satirical, sexy, unsettling, sad, surreal, sometimes funny, & bursting with imagery. Carnal, magical, & quite unique. A fascinating story.

[Naori · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to read this story you have to leave yourself, your understanding of the line between the living and the dead, the masks we put on to exist, and the frenzy that comes from throwing those to the wind. You cannot become entranced within this world, within this story, without a sense of abandonment. Everything is not anything. It is all everything at the same time. It all swirls around the living beast that is Carnival, a thing that cannot be stopped even in death.

Carnival is about colored expression, sound, ancestors, frenzied sensuality, displaying the body, celebrating culture, invoking the spirits (each island is different), costumes with excruciating meaning, a language you have to be a part of to understand, music, so much music, and something that, once it starts, is very hard to stop. (p.s. if you are in the islands you may be able to experience something similar but far less extravagant, which occurs more often and is more parade-esque called “Junkanoo “. It does give you a sense of the costumes, music and the spirit so I recommend going to it if it is available.)

As I was reading this I felt like whatever page I was on I didn’t understand, but by the time I moved to the next one I had grasped it fully. But in the end, all I needed to understand was Hadriana. I literally couldn’t read this novel in a linear fashion in order to be completely in it; and even though it had pg numbers, it should not. The only way to read this book is to follow its pattern, which is not one our western minds understand how to do.

Again, shed your skin, go to the nearest high dive board, and take the plunge. Don’t come up until Hadriana is ready to let you....

[Jerrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a wild, surrealist, zombie love story of a book. Set in 1938 Haiti, it's about a zombie bride, told mainly through the eyes of the man who loved her, not the husband to be. The structure of the book was a little strange in that we don't really understand what happened to Hadriana until the last section of the book. There were also a few ends that weren't so much loose as really frayed. It was a fun, colorful read with vivid scenes of Carnival in Haiti and the voodo culture.

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had a lifelong interest in vampires, the legends and how they came about. One thing I was good at in my teaching career was telling scary stories to the kids on outdoor adventure camps. They were often twists on Poe (The Premature Burial), but also on vampire legend. The Zombie Farmer for example (on whose field we were camping), who had been mown by the combine harvester after a row with his brother some years before, but 'lived' to tell the tale, sewn back together. The kids often embellished.. don't look the farmer straight in the eye or else you turn into a vampire yourself. I pointed out that that was probably the last thing their parents wanted, their child returning as a zombie.

So this was right up my street. Sure enough, there is an element of humour in it, but its real strength is the detail of village life in the rural Jacmel in southern Haiti in 1938 where Catholicism vies with Vodouism. In the build up to Carnival a young Creole woman, Hadriana, is about to be married but on the morning of the wedding she drinks from a mysterious drink and dies. Hadriana's wedding becomes her funeral.

This is far from being a standard zombie novel, or even horror. Depestre, who was first and foremost a poet, writes beautifully about the people and their culture. The book won the Prix Renaudot in 1988. It is a journey into Haitian folklore exploring voodoo culture (spelt vodou by Depestre).
In an example of inciting the wrath of the Catholic church, a number of items are sacrificed to the fire for Hadriana during the Carnival ceremony / funeral; from simple articles of clothing and blankets to garter belts, bras, satin lingerie, an enormous gothic dildo, and a nun’s wimple. The 'fire sacrifice' continues while candles are being burned on top of a drawing of Hadriana’s genitals.

Underlying as her grave is found empyt and the story pans out, is the oppression in Jacmel, and all of Haiti, through government and climatic conditions, that has resulted in fear, neglect, poverty, and desperation.

It really is wonderful stuff.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book from the publisher for review.

I read this book a couple weeks ago and for some reason it's taken me this long to write a review. The strange thing is I enjoyed the book, but I'm not entirely sure how to write about it.

It's a book that involves zombies, and I think that automatically makes a reader think something very specific about what kind of book it will be. I guarantee it's not like that. At the risk of sounding especially elitist, this book is not a book about zombies. It's not a fast-paced, horror-genre book. This is about Haiti, which is where the concept of zombies really originated from. This book, originally published in 1988, was written very poetically which makes sense since René Depestre was a well-known poet during his living years.

The story is narrated by a young Haitian man who tells the story of Hadriana, a young Creole woman. She is soon to be married but on the wedding day she collapses at the altar and, assume dead, is buried. And this is where things get strange but beautiful as we learn about the events leading up to her zombie-hood, and her struggles to break free of it.

It's a fascinating and short novel lyrically written. Readers who appreciate a small dose of magical realism will enjoy this book, but again, don't be turned off or turned on by the fact that it involves zombies, because it won't be The Walking Dead like you may be expecting.

Full review here.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this is a REAL zombie novel. Sort of.

Haitian poet and novelist René Depestre conjures one bizarre yet beautiful dreamscape of the surreal, the bawdy, the erotic, the academic, and the horrific in this short novel first published in French in 1988.

In the opening pages alone, you encounter a dead woman being driven in a limo to the beach while wearing a carnival mask that is actually a butterfly that was actually once a man who had been transformed by a vengeful priest as punishment for being an absolute slut while the prefect's one-hundred-year-old parrot announces "It's the end of the world!" And evidently this cursed butterfly still had the reputation of being quite the player, seducing young maidens and even nuns with magical aphrodisiacs with the power to have six orgasms in under a minute.

Oh yeah, baby! And this book is just warming up!

Meanwhile, a brilliant marriage is taking place between the wealthy and beautiful creole Hadriana and local boy Hector. Just as she takes her marriage vows, Hadriana suddenly falls to the ground. Dead. Her parents are devastated. The townsfolk are pissed that this will ruin Carnival. The matrons of the town suspect evil sorcerery. Sure enough, rumors and evidence start to come to light to the point where it appears Hadriana may have been the victim of zombification. But whatever happened to this jewel of a girl, who was the pride and joy of Jacmel, her death marks the beginning of the decline of the small sea port.

I promise that you've never read anything quite like this weird and wonderful book.

Part of the reason for all the strangeness is because Depestre writes in language and literary styles far more flavorful than most Western readers are accustomed. The novel weaves "langaj" with "lodyans," the former being the secret language of voodoo, and the latter being a special form of satire. In addition, the novel is packed with historical references and personalities that those familiar with Caribbean history will understand, but which might require a bit of side research for most audiences to appreciate. Therefore, there will naturally be some cultural flair and in-jokes that global readers will not be able to fully grasp.

I've heard some critics say that satire is lost on most Western audiences these days. I think that it is true that the art has been in decline since the early 20th century, but this is a horror novel, and contemporary readers of horror and fantasy are actually quite well-versed in satirical language and style. Therefore, I think most people likely to read this review will certainly enjoy the quirky approach this novel takes to exploring its bountiful themes and social commentary.

Depestre, as a native of Jacmel, takes on the Haitian cultural and religious divide between Christianity and Vodou with affection and honesty. The result can be downright hilarious. But after Hadriana's fateful wedding night, the novel abruptly changes tone and style, losing the fairy tale plot to become more of a documentary or personal essay on the fate of Haiti. Here it becomes unclear what is fiction and what is Depestre's autobiographical thoughts. The author himself even inserts an apology through the words of the narrator, as it appears he had meant to turn these ideas into either a novel or an academic treatise, but sat on it way too long and eventually decided to just put it out there as is. As a result, the book does lack cohesion at this point. Nevertheless, this section is fascinating.

First of all, we get an incomplete recipe for the potions used in zombification. The rogue houngan puts the target into a false death using a mixture that includes everything from rum to puffer fish bladders, then revives the person with an anedote that consists, among other things, of seawater that had once been used as a vaginal douche. Knowing the little that I do about neurochemistry, I developed my own theories on how the various ingredients may actually not be as bizarre as they sound and could actually contribute to the desired effects. But that's a topic for another day.

Depestre talks about the prosperity of his hometown in the days before Hadriana's death, which led to an interracial harmony, a simultaneous embrace by the inhabitants of European French and African cultures, with high educational standards and fun laissez-faire individualism, all on the lovely azure waters of the Caribbean. Indeed, he makes Jacmel in the years prior to 1938 sound like the ideal place to live! But after Hadriana, the impact of Papa Doc and black nationalist extremism, political corruption, natural disasters, and multiple other factors all led to Jacmel being barely a shanty town rather than a thriving coastal community--the train station unused, schools almost unheard of, the ports falling to decay, and the only remaining hotel a ghost of the past. Depestre's heart-rending depiction of Jacmel by the 1980s reminds me a lot of the fate of small town North America. It's as if someone stole the soul of this beautiful place and sealed it in an old bottle of Coca Cola.

Honestly, this novel will appeal to lovers of haute non-genre fiction and horror, an emotional and tender analysis of the "American" experience in the truest sense of the word. I only wish Depestre had disciplined himself to weave all the themes into a cohesive narrative rather than slipping into pedantic mode. As I was reading this, I found numerous opportunities to convey everything he wanted in an engaging story. If he had done so, I think this book would be more well known and celebrated across the world. There's one scene in particular that sent genuine chills up my spine, and if this had been the fulcrum of a fully fleshed out drama, this book would be a real gut punch.

But as it is, I strongly recommend you give this wild ride a try. I may have appreciated it a little more due to my own family ties to the archipelago, but I think Depestre's insight and style will be of wide interest to the curious reader. Perhaps Hadriana will haunt all of your dreams as well.

SCORE: 4 horny butterflies and half a bottle of rum, rounded to 5/5

[2TReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

What did I just read?!!

Depestre definitely set out to set the record straight re zombies and the rituals behind zombification, after it has been so bastardized by the White Western gaze.

Depestre stuns with this lusciously descriptive and erotic atmosphere that he has crafted of Jacmel. In the wake of a mysterious and tragic death, amidst the rampaging of a lascivious butterfly, the clashing tenets of Catholicism and Vodou play out.

What is clear is the intimacy in the relation of this tale, the crafting of the characters and conversations, the language that builds the dialogue and narrative. Depestre is proud of the culture, the beliefs, the rituals, even the contradictions that make Haiti so rich and in telling Hadriana's story has drawn us into this world of revelry, religion, esoteric practices, transformations, and love.

The prose is metaphoric and poetic at times, and aids in immersing the reader in the headiness, the striking expressions of grief and celebration in Jacmel.

Even with the overuse of the eroticization of the female body, Depestre engages emotions, thoughts, and reactions, keeping his readers immersed in this scandalous and magical tale.

[Allison Hurd · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a strange book. At once pretentious and prurient, a scathing indictment of the colonization of Haiti and yet expresses a love for the white man's world--fever dream vodou zombie story meets historical pastiche of 19th century travelogues. Just...very odd. I'm not even sure what content to warn about, because I'm not sure I understood where we were being cheeky and licentious and where we were being cagey about harms done.

I honestly don't know how to categorize it. But it's short, and I have found very little of genre fiction from Haiti, so I'm not mad I read it, but I'm also glad it's done.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel really picked up for me after about the first 35 pages. Depestre wrote it about 30 years ago, but it was only recently translated to English.

It is a slow build. Damn is it also dark, sexy, and beautiful. I loved Hadriana as a narrator. Her observations and criticisms are so sharp. I want to sit with these characters and drink iced tea while they tell me stories.

It's a solid read, 3.5 stars.

[Kyriakos Sorokkou]

Άλλο ένα βιβλίο από το αναγνωστικό μου ταξίδι σ' όλο τον κόσμο.
Η αλήθεια είναι ότι το τρίτο μέρος έσωσε αυτό το βιβλίο.
Ήταν τα γεγονότα των δύο προηγούμενων μερών από την οπτική γωνία της Αδριάνα.
Το είδα σαν επανάληψη και κάλυψα αρκετά κενά που είχα διαβάζοντας τα πρώτα 2 μέρη.


Ένα βιβλίο που ασχολείται με την συμβιωτική σχέση της ρωμαιοκαθολικής εκκλησίας με την θρησκεία βουντού, θρησκεία που συναντάται κυρίως στην Αϊτή, το γαλλόφωνο κομμάτι του νησιού Ισπανιόλα, το δεύτερο μεγαλύτερο νησί της Καραϊβικής μετά την Κούβα. Το ισπανόφωνο το κατέχει η Δομινικανή Δημοκρατία.

Σε μια μικρή πόλη της Αϊτής είναι που εξελίσσεται η ιστορία, την δεκαετία του 30, την περίοδο του καρναβαλιού.

Η πρωταγωνίστριά μας αφού πιει πριν το γάμο της ένα ποτήρι λεμονάδα ποτισμένο με δηλητήριο βουντού που θα την κάνει να μοιάζει νεκρή (χωρίς ανάσα και κρύα), θα καταλήξει από νύφη στον τάφο. Την ίδια μέρα το σώμα της απαγάγεται αλλά αφού ξυπνήσει θα καταφέρει να δραπετεύσει.

Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι η ιστορία της. Ένα βιβλίο εξωτικό με καρναβαλίστικη ατμόσφαιρα, εμποτισμένη φυσικά με τις παραδόσεις του βουντού, και της ρωμαιοκαθολικής εκκλησίας. 
Με άφθονα στοιχεία μαγικού ρεαλισμού και μεταποικιακής γραφής.

[Augustin Levesque-Mongrain]

Vla quelques années, j'avais voulu en apprendre plus sur Haïti. Je me suis donc tapé un livre d'histoire d'une quatre centaines de pages.
J'ai l'impression d'en avoir appris beaucoup plus au travers de ce livre et, au passage, il m'a permis de comprendre un peu plus ce qu'était le vaudou et sa place dans la société haïtienne.

Bien joué les René

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my usual fare: this has zombies, voodoo lore, boys turned into sex mad butterflies, the talking walking dead and is often politically incorrect (although its accounts of the effects of European colonialism is spot on). However I enjoyed it immensely. As Edwidge Danticant says in the introduction - 'Just as one might at carnival, one must surrender to this story while not being too easily offended or outraged.' I surrendered.

[Eline De Vocht · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

Reading Around the World Challenge: Haiti

Set during the vibrant 1938 Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, Hadriana in All My Dreams centers on a young French woman who mysteriously collapses and dies at the altar on her wedding day. Shortly after her funeral, her body vanishes from its grave, sparking rumors that she was secretly zombified through Vodou magic.

The most interesting part was how Depestre reclaims zombification from cheap Western horror tropes, returning it to its true Vodou roots as a metaphor for colonial oppression and lost free will. I loved how the novel weaves this into its setting, capturing the cultural blend of Catholicism and local mysticism. However, the story lost some momentum for me in the second half: Hadriana’s perspective mostly retraces events we already know, and the ultimate resolution felt a little too effortless given the heavy premise. All in all, it's a fascinating, thematic read.

“Then its beating seemed to rise from the depths of the earth, as if the root of the cosmos and my heart were beating as one to nourish the mysterious language of my return to life.”

[Faith B · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little slow in the first act but I did enjoy the relentless horniness of the language.

[Amolhavoc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a wild ride, and I loved it. Hadriana Siloé drops down dead at her own wedding due to witchcraft enacted by a sexually predatory butterfly, only to be raised again as a zombie a few hours later. We follow her story through the eyes of her infatuated god-brother Patrick as he spends the next forty years mooning over her and contemplating the fate of their hometown in Haiti.

Why it took thirty years for this to translated into English goodness knows - I enjoyed the translator's cheeky suggestion that it is essentially too saucy for the Anglophone world. Very glad to have randomly stumbled upon it in my local library.

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic of Haitian literature, Hadriana In All My Dreams is a vibrant and sensual tale about Carnival in Jacmel, the magic of Voodoo, the mystery of zombification, a lascivious butterfly, lots of sex (with a multitude of creative words and phrases for describing genitalia), and a young woman's death on her wedding night which sends an entire town into mourning. The story is written with lush, beautiful sexy language that brings Haitian culture to life in a way that's haunting and powerful.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could tell just from the introduction that this book was going to be extremely difficult to review. When the writer of the forward says “one must surrender to this story while not being too easily offended or outraged,” I immediately had alarm bells ringing in my head. I knew from the synopsis that this book was going to have a strong focus on the erotic, and I tried to go into this story with an open mind, but I still have mixed feelings.

I guess I was thinking this story would be similar to, say, One Hundred Years of Solitude which explores themes of longing, eroticism and even the taboo in Caribbean literature. Like that one, this story is a beautifully written work of magical realism, so you can never be sure what is real, what is just a story, and what is something in between. I think the synopsis offered by both the marketing of this book and the forward are intentionally vague because the unfolding of the story is really meant to be experienced, but there are some things in this book that would be extremely triggering to victims of sexual assault, and I also think it will be easier to explain my own unease if I just explain what happens:

*trigger warnings for sexual assault from here on out*

The story begins with our protagonist, Patrick, witnessing an event which is later spun into a fantastic tale, and we are introduced to the melding of story and reality until memory becomes something in between. Patrick sees his godmother being driven through town wearing a strange butterfly mask. He follows the car through the streets all the way to the gates of her home and only later finds out that she had been dead the whole time. From this, one of his friends spins a tale about a man who was caught in bed with a sorcerer's wife. The sorcerer curses the man by turning him into a giant butterfly who is insatiably lustful, but who is only attracted to virgins and widows. The butterfly then spends his nights r*ping young girls while they sleep, and sometimes both the young girls and their widowed mothers in one night.

Here, the story takes its time to describe, in detail, the fantastic and erotic dreams the girls and women have while they are being r*ped, being sure to let us know that although they would “awaken dismayed, with blood everywhere, brutally deflowered” the dreams were extremely pleasurable and they low-key liked it (and here is my first point of contention with books about female sexuality and pleasure written by a man, and one which treats consensual sex and r*pe the same, as if they are both part of the “erotic”). The butterfly continues to terrorize the town until he finds an insatiable widow with 7 vaginas (the now-dead godmother) with whom he stays for the rest of her life. After her death, the butterfly covers her eyes so he can lead her across the bay that separates the world from heaven.

It is reinforced later that this is just a story made up by a horny teenage boy, but it quickly spreads and enters the town’s collective imagination and has a big impact on the story. It is just super uncomfortable to read, and not, I think, in the way the author intended. It is shocking, but not because of its sexual nature- because of the casualness with which the subject is handled. Like...I get it, the butterfly is a metaphor for colonialism, but I just hate that the author feels entitled to use women’s bodies to make a point like this. This is a perfect example of why, though, this book is so hard to talk about. Because this is just a story-within-the-story, the effect is in a way more important than the narrative itself. But because the story, especially the r*pe parts, are described in such detail, it makes it very distracting and uncomfortable to read- but the discomfort may be intentional? It is also impossible for me, who is not Haitian, to say how much of this particular flavor of eroticism is perhaps just a cultural thing that I do not understand, and it's further not my place to tell colonized people how to discuss colonialism, but I could have done without the r*pe is all I’m saying.

Just a few days after the death of Patrick’s godmother, Hadriana dies on her wedding day- literally drops dead as she says “I do.” Due to the mysterious circumstances and the timing, many of the superstitious townspeople believe that the butterfly killed her so that he could r*pe her during her crossing of the bay (her fiancé had been diligent about protecting her “virtue,” which made it impossible for the butterfly to do this while she was alive). To protect her during her final passage, the local priestess says that Hadrianna’s body must undergo a “sacred deflowering” so that the butterfly can’t take her virginity. This causes a bit of a rift between the French Catholic traditions and indigenous vodou practices which are both important to the people of the town. People who never knew Hadriana are now literally arguing over her body and acting as if her virginity was a public commodity. There’s also a lot in here about Hadriana dying at “the height of her physical glory” and that her beauty would start to fade as soon as she got married despite the fact that she was only 19. Again, I get it- Hadriana is a metaphor for Haiti- but within the context of the story she’s also a literal person.

This seems too pointed to not be intentional, but again, it is difficult to say. At this point, we know absolutely nothing about Hadriana except that she was beautiful since we only ever see her through the eyes of Patrick, who sees her as an idealized, otherworldly creature. Plus, this story is narrated by a future Patrick, who is remembering these events from far away, and there are now layers of stories and false memories laid over the “real” ones, which further obscure Hadriana as a real person and render her nothing more than a body or a creature in a boy’s story (or an extremely obvious metaphor for Haiti itself).

On the day after her burial, Hadriana’s grave is dug up and her body goes missing, never to be seen again. In the decades that follow, her story fades into myth and the town itself begins to diminish. During this time, Patrick travels the world but can’t stop thinking about Hadriana and the nature of zombies in Haitian culture. Again, it seems like Hadriana’s literal body is being used, both by the characters in the story and by the author himself, as a metaphor for the post-colonial economic decline of Haiti.

After this, the story sort of becomes a non-fiction book as we read Patrick’s essay on the unique nature of zombies in Caribbean culture, and how they have changed following colonization. This part was actually very interesting, but I thought it was strange that everything kept coming back to Hadriana. I was distracted by how objectifying it all was, and I kept wishing the author could make these interesting points without using a young girl's body. I kept trying to give this book the benefit of the doubt and think that this was intentional commentary, but then Patrick started teaching college courses on Caribbean literature and we got lines like this, describing his female students: “they crossed their legs high on the thigh, exposing themselves to the yearnings of my frustrated single man’s lust with their fleshy curves ready for the most delightful plowing” and I was right back to thinking it was just misogyny.

Again, it is not the sex or eroticism that makes me uncomfortable, it the author’s treatment of women like they are metaphors in the male protagonist’s life and culture rather than real people (also how creepy is the word “fleshy” when used by a male author discussing attractive women?)

It is not until the last third of the book that we get to hear anything from Hadriana herself. This section, which is less than a third of the book, is amazing. Seeing the same events described from Hadriana’s perspective is not just less uncomfortable and misogynistic, it is also just more interesting. As Hadriana “dies” and comes back as a zombie, we see her drift through life and death as if they were waking and sleeping and it is super dreamy and strange. There’s also just great commentary about how, to Hadriana, Haiti is exemplified in the gorgeous gardens of her childhood mansion. She beautifully describes the plants from all over the Caribbean, but at the same time, clearly did not understand the colonialist implications of her, a white person, living in a mansion with indigenous servants (whom her mother called “their indigenous family”).

This, I thought, was social commentary I could really get in on because it wasn’t using someone else’s body to do it. As great as this section was, though, it was also kind of frustrating, because it shows that the author was capable of writing a very different, female-centered story that wasn't told from the perspective of a horny teenage boy who turned into a gross, horny man who harrassed his students, but chose not to. I understand splitting the story in two, with roughly one half being told from Patrick, a black indigenous boy’s, perspective, and the other from Hadriana, a white French girl’s, perspective. But I just really didn’t like how Patrick thought about women so I hated being in his head. As it turns out, Hadriana is bisexual (this is one of many things we learn about her when she is finally able to speak for herself- like I did not even realize she was blonde until she described herself) and I just think I would have liked the story so much more if the other half had been told by her girlfriend/ best friend Lolita (though I’m not sure if she was also white because she was only in one scene and Hadriana was focused on describing other things about her *wiggles eyebrows*).

The idea of using zombies as a metaphor for post-colonial societies, especially within a Caribbean culture in which vodou and zombies were such a large part of the culture prior to its forced conversion to Christianity, is the most interesting and thought-provoking stance on zombies I have ever read, especially when compared to the dime-a-dozen “zombies are a metaphor for consumerism and group-think you sheeple” hot takes I’m used to seeing. It's just that anytime a woman’s body becomes a metaphor, I just can’t help but think it’s a little galaxy-brained. BUT the writing is beautiful, and it is very thought-provoking- hence the mixed feelings.

[Peyton · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Seventh Proposition (False Identity): Haiti, like the other 'discovered' lands of the Americas, entered into modern history caught up in this game of masks (white, black, Indian, mulatto, etc.)—that is to say, with a false identity. At the very bottom of the pit that is the reification of men, within the boundaries of death and the separation of the passions, at the tail end of the tragedy of being, is where one encounters the existential time and place of the zombie. Without a personal life or civil status, registered with the local cemetery, torn from the bosom of the family, of the church, of pleasure, dance, sex, friendship, and life itself; bound day and night by the purely physiological and physical exigencies of harsh labor, the zombie adds a fourth episode to the three classic scenarios of black history: brute idiots with backs bent to till the earth; oversized children to be evangelized; angry Black Power militants meant to frame of this ternary destiny governed by the basic barbaric/civilized binary, the zombie represents the ultimate biological fuel—that which remains of Caliban after the loss of his identity, his life having been cut literally in two, his gros bon ange of muscular effort condemned to forced labor in perpetuity and his petit bon ange of knowledge and enlightenment, of innocence and imagination, forever exiled in the first empty bottle within reach."

[Genesee Rickel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very sexual (not always in a comfortable way, partly because it’s an unfamiliar -to me- culture, partly because consent is not always present). I found this interesting and feel like I missed a lot (I’m a bit of a distracted reader right now). I’d like to reread this and wish I could do so with some guidance, within the structure of a class or in conversation with commentary/essays. It was different and intriguing and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it.

[Erin *Proud Book Hoarder* · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's kind of funny. I had to find a book for a challenge set in a certain list of countries, saw this while browsing, and figured for some reason it would be a serious, highly literating and sobering story. Generally that's my experience with books set in certain foreign countries. This one, set in Haiti and with the serious cover, is anything but. It's an easy read, lyrical in its way sure, but primarily playful. It's humor done in a morbid dollop of glee. I doubt the author expects this book to be anyone's top favorite list of all time and doesn't attempt that - it's fantastical, gloriously demented, imaginative with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge situation. I did enjoy it, although it left me wondering when reading what the hell I was actually reading.

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake) · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started this, I thought I was in for a potential new favorite: I loved the first part. But this book is told in 3 parts, and I gotta say I was not very enthralled with part 2 & 3. You see that reflected in my overall mid rating. But it's an interesting, daring book, maybe not perfectly suited for me in some aspects but definitely for some readers.

The writing can be gorgeous, very atmospheric, moody and vibey. Also very sexy in moments, there are lots of descriptions of certain body parts and certain desires and acts, occasionally unintentionally hilarious. No actual on page sex but a lot of musings on the subject. It fits into this dark and mystical air that fills the book but in certain parts it goes to far for me, especially in part 3. But more on that later. This goes into the Haitian zombification tradition, so get your modern Romero Zombies out of your head when you enter here. And let's be real, this type of Zombie is even more terrifying when people are basically drugged and forced to labor as slaves in this Zombie state. Yet it turns almost tragically romantic when a young bride will be affected by this when she "dies" during her wedding vows, gets buried and resurrected. It is also the night of the carnival and all these different energies meet: Romance vs terror, eroticism vs tragedy, celebration vs death, Horror vs realism. And while it occasional gets a little weird, the first part executes that so well.

But then we get into the 2nd, where our narrator could never let go off his obsession with Hadriana. He learns and teaches us about the Zombie phenomenon, and honestly the whole thing drags a bit. All the wonderful atmosphere of the beginning had shriveled away, and I also wasn't quite sure why he was so obsessed with her. I feel like her actual husband should have played more of that part, he was just a prop though who disappears with shock into the hospital during that fateful night?! Anywho, it really fell apart when in the 3rd part Hadriana herself takes us through the events leading up to the wedding and what happened after. First of all, it is told a bit flat with "this happened, then that" momentum and it got really uncomfortable when she is described as constantly lusting to be finally "deflowered' and to be touched and so on and so forth... I am not sure these would be the thoughts of a young virginal bride recounting the night criminals tried to turn her into a Zombie and her family abandoned her.... Yeah, I was really struggling with how Depestre was depicting her here, I didn't like that at all. Whereas in the first part the erotic descriptions fit into the wild atmosphere, here it was completely out of place. This part also serves very little purpose other than filling in the blanks about what happened to her, it doesn't quite explain to me why she after leaving the island after the ordeal decides decades later to seek out the narrator and start a love affair with him now?!

So yeah, part 3 might have ruined this for me. But I still think it is an interesting, and at times very evocative read to gain some insights into Haitian history and culture, especially those aspects lingering on this border of myth and realism.

[Hadley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dreamy.

[Véronique RAMOND · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un livre sauvé par sa dernière partie, très poétique, où Hadriana Siloe raconte sa tentative de zombification.
Le début du roman m'a semblé, en revanche, soporifique.

[Jo Reason · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I attempt to open my mind about different books, especially genres and writing styles, I choose Hadriana in All My Dreams by Rene Depestre from Haiti, (a big thanks to Jacaranda Books for gifting me this book) and oh my gosh, this was just so unique and different and so very enjoyable. Zombies!!! and lascivious butterflies!!! But this has nothing to do with zombies Walking Dead style… this is zombies Haiti style, they don’t eat people there.
Written in 1988 with a 1938 onwards setting it such a good book. So what is a zombie, Haiti style, This description is from the book itself “According to Uncle Ferdinand, a zombie—man, woman, or child—is a person whose metabolism has been slowed down under the effects of some organic toxin, to the point of giving all appearances of death: general muscular hypotonia, stiffened limbs, imperceptible pulse, absence of breath and ocular reflexes, lowered core temperature, paleness, and failure of the mirror test. But despite these outward signs of death, the zombie actually retains the use of his or her mental faculties. Clinically deceased, interred and buried publicly, he or she is raised from the grave by a witch doctor in the hours following the burial and made to labor in a field (a zombie garden) or in an urban workshop (a zombie factory). “
According to the author, Edwidge Danticat, who wrote the forward mentions “one must surrender to this story while not being too easily offended or outraged”
It is not horror, it is wonderfully written in lyrical prose, with long detailed descriptions and makes you feel you are in the novel itself, and I think my favourite part was the description of the curse at the beginning of the book and as there are different perspectives, Hadriana’s perspective was the one I enjoyed the most. But the butterfly curse, and the carnival details were also high up there.
Recommended for readers interested in Haiti voodoo culture and at only 160 pages I would have liked a bit more.
I am giving this book 5 stars because I liked this book alot.
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