Palmyra
by Karen Barrow (Friesen Press, 330 pp, ISBN 9781039195813)
Lush and craftily constructed, this Gothic suspense novel from Trinidadian-Canadian Karen Barrow marks her as a debut author worth watching. Palmyra is narrated through the gaze of Joe — an ambitious, scholarly young boy living on a cocoa estate on the cusp of the 20th century. The figures in that world, from both genteel and proletariat classes, contend with a rigid social hierarchy, the spectres of slavery, and the cruel impositions respectability places on everyone’s truest dreams. Through a tempestuous tableau, laced with secret assignations and blood-curdling shocks, Barrow governs her prose with a judicious eye for detail — a discerning vantage point that allows the reader satisfying narrative immersions. Intrigue, scandal, and even a sepulchral warning are assembled in this gratifyingly-paced plot. As Joe himself says in a reflective moment: It’s been a house of ghosts drifting past each other.
By Shivanee Ramlochan | Issue 186 (January/February 2025)
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