Turning her historical fiction chops on her own family, novelist Condé (Story of the Cannibal Woman
) looks at her grandmother Victoire’s hard life in Guadeloupe at the turn of the 19th century, “a prisoner of her illiteracy, her illegitimacy, her gender” who nevertheless gave Condé’s mother a life among the educated black bourgeoisie. Impregnated at 16 by a well-respected womanizer twice her age, Victoire was treated like a criminal, beaten by her father and run off from her home. After fleeing her shame, Victoire is taken on as a servant by a white Creole family, where she spent most of her life; there, her talent for cooking brings her the attention, admiration and business of prominent white Creoles. Condé proves just as impressive in her own medium: a tall man is “long as a day without bread”; the sea on a hot day shines “like a gold bar being smelted.” Deceptively slim, Condé’s 15th title is a savory, complex mix of Caribbean culture, black history and the lives of ordinary women. (Jan.)
