The Mermaid of Black Conch: The spellbinding winner of the Costa Book of the Year as read on BBC Radio 4

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In fact, chapter 2, entitled "Dauntless" was one incredible piece of writing. In it, Roffey really shows her strengths which I would characterize as terrific descriptions coupled with the ability to escalate tension. If I were teaching a writing class, I would use this chapter. If the whole book echoed this chapter, it would be certainly been five stars for me. Flood, Alison (26 January 2021). " 'Utterly original' Monique Roffey wins Costa book of the year". The Guardian. ISSN 1756-3224. Archived from the original on 10 February 2021 . Retrieved 20 July 2021. She is seen as property not as a person. Aycayia turns out to have thoughts and opinions of her own. Arcadia, the only white woman in the book tells her of local history and Aycayia responds: The structure of the novel was original and really worked for me. The two narrators did a wonderful job to bring the story and the people to life. I am looking forward to reading more of Monique Roffey, a talented writer from Trinidad and Tobago. One can’t help admiring the boldness of Roffey’s vision. . . . Sentence by sensuous sentence, Roffey builds a verdant, complicated world that is a pleasure to live inside. . . . Aycayia is a magical creature, though rendered so physically you might start to believe in the existence of mermaids.” —Shruti Swamy, The New York Times

So much of the substance of this book is lightly summarised in this quotation: the Caribbean setting, St Constance which is invented and yet feels real, the importance of memory and the perpetual weight of history, manhood and what it might mean, 'those white men' (though they're interestingly divided as the story progresses), fishing and related ecological issues... and the mermaid who is pulled up as if she, too, were a marlin, captured for sport and a trophy of a certain type of manliness. Old woman, pretty woman, both rejects. Womanhood was a dangerous business if you didn’t get it right. You make a very interesting point about David as well. We get the sense in this book that the relationship with Aycayia forever changes him, teaches him how to be a better man, and he notes that in his conversation with Arcadia where he tells her:This is David's first person account from his journal written 40 years later in the local creole, entries from which are interspersed with the third-person narration (mostly in more standard English) and Aycayia’s own thoughts, which are set down, in free verse: David was strumming his guitar and singing to himself when she first raised her barnacled, seaweed-clotted head from the flat, grey sea, its stark hues of turquoise not yet stirred. Plain so, the mermaid popped up and watched him for some time before he glanced around and caught sight of her. It took me a little while to get used to the style of this book. Some parts are poems and much of it is written in dialect which always takes me a while to get used to. However, once I’d got the hang of it I fell completely in love. I honestly did not want to put this book down and found myself staying up late to read it. The chapters are longer than I usually like, although they were broken into sections which helped. The sections jump between different points of view which helped to tell the tale from different perspectives.

One day while David is singing, he attracts the attention of “sea-dweller” he thought only existed in fairy tales and island “ole talk”. David sees the Mermaid, goes through a range of emotions one being curiosity. Daily he revisits the spot where he first sights the Mermaid, she begins showing up to hear him sing and play the guitar. They form a sort of bond that continues for weeks until the Mermaid begins listening for the hum of David’s boat.Lipscomb said the judges deliberated for three hours before choosing Roffey as their winner. “The novel feels like one of those stories you think you must have known before, because it already feels like a classic,” she said. “The mermaid is pulled out of the sea in this really arresting scene that, pun fully intended, hooks you in the novel just as much as she is hooked by the fisherman. And then it’s a question of whether she could become a woman again, and live in a modern Caribbean society and all the questions that raises. When we think of mermaids, because of Disney we think of fairytales, but this is a visceral mermaid – as she becomes a woman parts of her tail fall off and she smells. It’s very evocative in terms of the physicality.” The old Yankee man stood and shouted, "For Christ sake, can someone arrest this man, Life, or whatever his goddamn name is. You people and your goddamn stupid names." Keep in mind that these two men have never met before and that Life is not introduced or referred to by name in this scene. And this quote is bittersweet, for reasons that I won’t elaborate on as I want you all to go read the book for yourselves! But I also find interesting the points Arcadia makes right afterwards, which goes:

The historical ramifications of colonisation and imperialism are vividly present even in 1976 with the present of a white woman who owns most of the residences on the island. She is a perfectly nice woman and gets on well with David, but the legacies of slavery and ownership of colonised land, property and people is glaringly present in the daily lives of the residents of St Constance. It’s a sobering reminder of the long-lasting scars of colonialism. For me, life is made up of numerous influential voices and ideas: Buddhist dharma; the Caribbean lexicon; the tarot; text-speak; the secular world of London; the East End and its mosques and multiple immigrant histories, a part of London with its own vernacular… My life feels utterly fluid and diverse and yet works as a whole. So, everyday life shows me a non-linear form and that it’s utterly viable to compile a novel in the same way, to reflect this … And in this other interview with the New Statesman, Roffey also talked about the hybrid form of the novel — where an omniscient narrator appears alongside Aycayia’s verses and David’s journal entries. She says:At one stage Aycayia reflects on her time as a mermaid – “The sea was deeper than she knew or could swim … Her time had been spent mostly in the upper sea”: and I found that a good metaphor for the reading experience in this book But no two readers are alike and perhaps you will enjoy this book more than I did. Here are some direct quotes to help you decide: with a hit song “Part of Your World” that every little girl sang at home ‘over-and-over’ driving her parents crazy …. And this passage for me wrapped up very tightly but very powerfully this lasting and unchanging impact of colonialism. Aycayia in a way is a symbol of that for me — the impact of patriarchy, the impact of a people slaughtered, then found, just to be objectified and treated like property by these American fishermen in the Caribbean. For me, it was such a powerfully loaded passage.

It's good, it's really fine, I'm just getting old and have such a low tolerance for all this magical realism whimsicality. And then I read the summary and the author’s note about the events in the book being based on a historical event that happened after a fishing competition in Tobago in 2013 as well as the Taino folk tale of Aycayia and other mermaid lore of the Caribbean, and I became very intrigued! A story that’s evocative and reminiscent of oral storytelling traditions . . . Written partly in a beautiful rhythmic, lilting patois that creates a bold vision, it’s easy to find yourself deeply immersed in Roffey’s world, in a narrative that shows us how magic realism is oftentimes the best, most appropriate genre for post colonial fiction.” —Mahvesh Murad, Tor.com A searing blend of Caribbean magical realism and contemporary examination of misogyny and the reverberations of colonial oppression . . . Roffey’s fable is a moving love story, full of messy, glorious eroticism, but she also shines a light on the dangers of toxic masculinity, racial inequity and the difficulty of understanding our true natures.” —Connie Ogle, Star Tribune Freedom is another theme. Acyayia’s transformation frees her of the curse. Arcadia is free from her connections with white people when her house, built by slaves, is destroyed. Arcadia’s deaf and dumb son, Reggie cannot really experience the nastier elements of the world so he free from evil. David, by documenting his side of the story is finally letting his emotions escape so partly this book is a form of release.

One comment that I had was that I wrote it to cause social unrest and racial disharmony,” she says of Potiki. “I wasn’t a very politicised person at all.” Arriving on land in 1976, Aycayia finds friendship with the spliff-smoking David, and Arcadia Rain, a white woman who owns most of the island’s property and lives in a mansion on the hill with her deaf son. Between them, they teach Aycayia to speak Creole, American sign language and “the English that is written in books”.