{"id":8414,"date":"2020-12-22T06:07:48","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T06:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8414"},"modified":"2020-12-24T12:13:09","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T12:13:09","slug":"frying-plantain-by-zalika-reid-benta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8414","title":{"rendered":"Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Dialogue Books 13 August 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

272pp, hardback, \u00a314.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twelve chapters, each a self-contained snapshot, tell the story of a young girl growing up in Toronto.\u00a0 Canadian Jamaican Kara Davis is 10 at the start, 19 at the end, and by then we want at least the same again: the book calls for a sequel.<\/p>\n

According to her grandmother, 10-year-old Kara has always made up stories.\u00a0 One school term, she goes a bit too far, claiming to have slaughtered a pig enthusiastically while visiting her cousins in Jamaica.\u00a0 She gets into big trouble, not least with her feisty academic single mother, Eloise, who has ambitions for Kara.<\/p>\n

Eloise has rules.\u00a0 One day, when Kara and her friends are let out of school because of bad weather, Kara disobeys the rule that says she has to wait at school for further instructions if there\u2019s an emergency.\u00a0 Inevitably, she gets into trouble again, when her friends play a nasty trick on her and sex rears its ugly head.<\/p>\n

By this time, Kara is shaping up to be a most appealing character:\u00a0 strong, observant, conflicted, lonely.\u00a0 Her mother and grandmother (\u2018Nana\u2019) don\u2019t get on, partly perhaps because Eloise herself got pregnant at 17 – a fate Eloise is determined to spare her daughter.\u00a0 Nana spends her time when she\u2019s not at church obsessively cooking and vacuuming; when her obstinate husband (Kara\u2019s grandfather) turns up, she ignores him and refuses to feed him.\u00a0 Everybody else shouts and screams, while food is forced upon them.\u00a0 Kara and her mum move house incessantly, setting up makeshift homes wherever they can, and when they can\u2019t, returning to a stormy co-existence with Nana.<\/p>\n

It is a miracle that Kara stays at school and survives.\u00a0 In one chapter – brilliantly describing an awkward session in the school\u2019s \u2018sharing circle\u2019 – she manages to face down one of her enemies.\u00a0 In another, \u2018Inspection\u2019, the reader feels her pain when, at 14,\u00a0 she\u2019s trying to choose clothes that won\u2019t enrage or offend anyone (especially her mother and grandmother), or put her at the mercy of lustful men;\u00a0 and when she gets her first love bite, that presents a real problem. \u00a0Another brilliant chapter shows Kara\u2019s estranged grandparents attempting to live under the same roof in \u2018parallel universes\u2019 while driving each other crazy. \u00a0<\/strong>When she\u2019s 18, Kara gets paralytically drunk and disgraces herself.\u00a0 She has a row with her mother and leaves home, but only briefly.\u00a0 Somehow, she hangs in there and, we assume, proceeds to college.<\/p>\n

There is a crackling intelligence here, combined with warm, humane observation. Toronto\u2019s \u2018Little Jamaica\u2019 feels very real and immediate. Above all, we want to know how this young woman\u2019s life develops once she gets out from under.\u00a0 A very strong debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

* A 2020 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

Kara is shaping up to be a most appealing character: strong, observant, conflicted, lonely. Her mother and grandmother (\u2018Nana\u2019) don\u2019t get on, partly perhaps because Eloise herself got pregnant at 17 – a fate Eloise is determined to spare her daughter. Nana spends her time when she\u2019s not at church obsessively cooking and vacuuming; when her obstinate husband (Kara\u2019s grandfather) turns up, she ignores him and refuses to feed him. Everybody else shouts and screams, while food is forced upon them […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8414"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8468,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414\/revisions\/8468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}