From the Costa- and Commonwealth-shortlisted author of Pao, a story of revolution and oppression, privilege and poverty, love and betrayal, set against the backdrop of Jamaican independence. Fay Wong is a woman caught between worlds. Her father is a Chinese immigrant who conjured a fortune out of nothing; her mother, of African heritage, grew up on a plantation and now reigns over their mansion on Lady Musgrave Road, sipping Earl Grey tea in the Kingston afternoons. But the Chinatown haunts where her father spends his time are out of bounds to Fay, and the rooms of Lady Musgrave Road are filled with her mother's long-kept secrets and uncontrollable rages--rages against which Fay rebels as she grows from a girl into a headstrong woman. As she tries to escape the restraints of her privileged upbringing, striving for independence in a homeland that is trying to do the same, Fay's eyes are opened to a Jamaica she was never meant to see. She encounters gangsters and revolutionaries, priests and prostitutes, and witnesses great sacrifices and betrayals. But when her mother decides that she must marry the racketeer Yang Pao, she finds herself on a journey that leads to sacrifices and betrayals of her own. In Show Me A Mountain , Kerry Young creates a vivid portrait of a woman and a country struggling to fashion a future unburdened by the past.
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Just a few weeks ago, PBS aired a documentary about a woman of Chinese and Jamaican ethnicity that goes on several trips to learn more about her ancestors. I happened to pick up Kerry Young's novel, “Show Me A Mountain” just beforehand and had to hold off until I finished a book club book.
Kerry Young is also of Chinese-Jamaican descent and now lives in England as highly-regarded professor and author of previous books. I was very excited to read this book and more stories about this ethnic group I had only recently learned about. What I got in the first 50 pages was staccato writing from the point of view of a prepubescent and then pubescent girl whose mother is abusive. Staccato writing can be very effective, but pages and pages of it is hard to process.
I decided to abandon this book and try another of Kerry Young's titles, “Pao,” which won a few awards and is a story about a Chinese immigrant to Jamaica.
If anyone reads this review and can encourage me to keep going because the book gets better, please do!
