White Spirit by Paule Constant

I'm really glad that the LBC decided to reveal the nominees in advance. I'm going to try to read as many of them as I can so I can participate in the discussions. I've just finished one of the books, Paule Constant's White Spirit. It's excellent. I'm going to reserve some of my thoughts for the discussions, but I'd like to recommend it to everyone. White Spirit is a tragicomic portrayal of postcolonial (kind of) Africa. I say 'kind of' because the influence of the West--especially America, and Hollywood in particular--is everywhere. The novel begins with Victor, a Frenchman, taking a post at a company called African Resource. His job is basically to sell the effluvia that the West doesn't want--toasters, irradiated milk, carcinogenic baby clothes--to the residents of a nearby 'Model Village.' In the great scheme of commercialism, African Resource is "the drainpipe at the bottom of the sea." Constant also gives us Lola, a biracial prostitute obsessed with whiteness and the Western (ie, Hollywood) ideals of beauty, and Brother Emmanuel, a priest of sorts whose dream is to attain paradise. The book is absurdist and satirical: African Resource overflows with things no one wants, like toasters, the economy runs on bananas, which no one likes and no one buys, etc.

And yet it's also a serious exploration of colonial devastation. Constant writes of the banana plantation-workers:

Nobody rebelled against this stupid fruit, this anarchy of fertility, this eternally lutted nature that constantly had to be relieved....Suffering, exhaustion, sleepless nights, and surveys on foot did not result in hatred or repugnance for bananas -- instead, the result was an irreparable hatred of man for man.

Constant's language is beautiful and fresh, making the book a pleasure to read. My only qualm is with the ending, which I won't give away. It makes sense in the context of the theme of Hollywood fetishism (the last chapter is called "Happy End"), but it didn't quite seem to fit with the climax of the book. I haven't quite made up my mind. But I was very, very happy with the book as a whole. Here's hoping that the other nominees are of such high quality as well. Thanks, litbloggers.