A Tall History of Sugar

Thank you to The Reading Agency and Canongate Books for providing Macclesfield Library Reading Group with copies of A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes for us to read and review. The book tackles lots of weighty issues, such as the nature of relationships, race and racism, self-acceptance, and our understanding of fairytales, with Biblical references throughout – clearly lots to talk about!

Thoughts from some of our members:
“I didn’t really care for the main characters but I liked the character of Rachel a lot”

“I struggled reading the Jamaican dialect but the book does celebrate Jamaican culture”

“A love story with a difference”

“A charming story”

“The ending felt a bit rushed and disappointing”

“I enjoyed the themes which the author explored, particularly religion vs superstition and the extent to which the sin of the parents impacts on the children”

“The relationship between Moshe and Arrienne is beautiful and almost fairytale-like in nature”

Moshe is born in Jamaica in the late 50s, shortly before Independence. He has a very strange appearance, described in the book as being “without a skin”. Having been abandoned by his mother at birth, he is adopted by Noah and Rachel Fisher. On day one of school he meets Arrienne, a beautiful, opinionated, strong girl who becomes his soul mate and his protectress. They form an unlikely relationship and become so close that they do not need words to communicate and are almost like two halves of the same “whole”. This book tells the story of their relationship and how it progresses into adulthood and beyond.

I will start with the positive points, but I am afraid it will be the shorter of the two sections. There are some very unusual characters in this book. Moshe and Arrienne are interesting in both character and appearance, and some of the peripheral characters also stand out as being eccentric or remarkable in other ways. There are hints of mysticism and folklore interspersed with the narrative, something which I am not usually comfortable with but, in this instance, I thought it was done well and didn’t take the storyline too far from reality. Also, despite the fact that I generally found the book difficult, there were some lighter moments when the story moved on much more quickly and the language was comprehensible. At these points I can honestly say that I was enjoying it but unfortunately they didn’t last long enough.

And so to the downside, and sadly this section is going to be quite densely populated!! If you get as far as Chapter 4 in this book (around 60 pages in), well done. Quite frankly you deserve a medal (although things do get slightly easier from here on in). I very nearly gave up on multiple occasions. Not only are many of the sentences badly constructed, but conversation is written in dialect and it is totally incomprehensible. Some of it is translated for the benefit of the reader, the rest you have to either skip over and create a story to fill in the gaps or struggle through and try and make some sort of sense of it. It really is very hard work indeed. Also, despite the fact that the two main characters were described in some detail I still didn’t really feel that I had a clear picture in my mind of what they looked like. Yet another confusing aspect of the book was that there were different narrators. Worse, sometimes the story was told in the third person and sometimes in the first, without any warning that things had changed. This meant that quite a lot of the time I didn’t know whose perspective on events I was listening to. In addition, it jumped around between timeframes which was another minefield to negotiate. And then, just as I was congratulating myself on having nearly reached the end, with about 15 pages to go the narrator suddenly lapses into a stream of consciousness narrative which would have put Virginia Woolf to shame. It nearly finished me off and I wasn’t at all sure I was actually going to make it. There were pages, literally, with no punctuation at all. Whilst I do understand the reason for adopting this style at this point in time, it did add an extra hurdle just as I was approaching the finishing straight. Deary me.

Would I recommend this book? Unfortunately I don’t think I can. I only gave it 2 stars as I can’t forgive the drudgery of the first three chapters and the work which was required to read the remainder. However, ultimately I am glad I persevered so you will really need to make your own minds up.