Cascade - Couverture souple

Lalla, Barbara

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 9766402337 ISBN 13 : 9789766402334

Editeur : University of the West Indies Press, 2010

Synopsis

"Do not go gentle into that good night." I write it in blood on the walls of my mind.

A guesthouse in Jamaica's mountains offers the ideal retreat for elderly friends weary of changes that have transformed their city, and a plan takes shape to retire together in the country house overlooking the sea. Terrorized by gunmen in their Kingston home, however, Ellie and Dan relocate to Trinidad instead, splintering off from the group to join their daughter's family, yet keeping in close contact with Dan's sister, whose stepson will run the home. Against the development of Cascade, under its dangerously inept manager, unfolds a tale of violent intrusion and dislocation, of cold-blooded exploitation and murderous resentment.

Yet it is also a tale of love and courage persisting through physical and mental deterioration as a brilliant and compassionate woman struggles with a disease that can wreck the relationships she treasures most. Damaged by Alzheimer's and irrepressible by nature, Ellie proves thoroughly disruptive even within her own supportive circle. Beyond it, relocated to Cascade, she becomes a witness haunted by fragments of excruciating memory. As time overtakes the main characters, tricks of the mind intersect with actual events and with the increasingly menacing forces that close in on the fragile Ellie.

Cascade recounts the gathering trauma of psychological dismemberment and poignant efforts to connect against a background of social turmoil. The novel engages with the challenges of Alzheimer's disease in a Caribbean context, where displacement, memory, identity loss and resistance remain crucial and enduring preoccupations.

Cascade is an accomplished work of fiction by a writer of obvious talent. It examines the subject of growing old with sensitive honesty, through the stories of three main characters. Ellie succumbs to Alzheimer's disease, her husband Dan suffers slow physical debilitation even as his mental faculties remain sharp, and Dan's sister's Rosemarie, though still sound in body and mind, finds her freedom impaired by the selfishness and cruelty of younger relatives.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Barbara Lalla is Professor Emerita, Language and Literature, the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Her many publications include the novels Grounds for Tenure, Uncle Brother, Cascade, and Arch of Fire, and the scholarly works Postcolonialisms: Caribbean Rereading of Medieval English Discourse, Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival, the companion volumes Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole and Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (co-authored with Jean D'Costa), and Caribbean Literary Discourse (co-authored with Jean D'Costa and Velma Pollard).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of the West Indies Press
• Date d'édition: 2010
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 9766402337
• ISBN 13: 9789766402334
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 308
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible