The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story - Winner of the Costa Book Award 2020

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I saw The Mermaid.. as a commentary on gender. Aycayia is punished by the gods for being beautiful but the same thing happens with one with normal citizens. There is an incident where a jealous neighbor does her best to ruin Aycayia. There is also a scene where two of the main protagonists are wondering why women tend not to get along with each other. Saying that, including Acycayia, the other female characters are strong and destroy stereotypical concepts some of the male characters in the book have about women. Elsewhere one of the Americans in the novel bullies his son for not liking masculine pursuits. T: Yea, wow! I really like the way in which Roffey uses different forms to give each character a different voice, and it totally makes sense to me that Aycayia’s voice is expressed through verse. Her name means “she with a lovely voice,” and she says this in the book. But it also makes their voices distinctive, and moving between reflection and events kind of helps pull the story along as we get the benefit of hindsight and introspection. The catching of the mermaid is pure Hemingway with the father and son US tourists fishing for marlin and the struggle to land her is long and messy and brutal. The older man is angry when his catch disappears:

But it is also possible to go deeper and to see it as something which explores many of the themes and ideas that inform both Roffey’s other writing (female sexuality, pre-Christian legends – particularly foundational myths about womanhood, Caribbean history on a multi-century scale, colonialism, creolisation, fatherhood, outsiders) and her wider activism (particularly her XR involvement). I prefer when it's substituted with a realistic description allowing me to see characters more as fully fleshed human beings. This book is about many things: feminism and colonialism, love, possession and jealousy, and a kind of erotic love that threatens to undo every other aspect of the characters’ lives. Aycayia is so strong and caring that we feel as if the magical realism of the novel has taken the genre itself into new and exciting territory. Readers surely will fall in love with the love story that plays like Shakespeare in island patois. David’s voice is so heartbreaking and Aycayia’s thoughts are so modern that their desires may overwhelm you as they do to themselves. Have you read this one? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below, we love to hear from you. What’s a mermaid-related read that you would recommend? Book recommendationsI do love how she confounds the Americans who came to the island for sport. This is how Hank Clayson, the young man who caught Aycayia with his fishing rod, described Arcadia: A beautifully, subtly written tale of an ancient woman, Aycayia, cursed to be a mermaid, captured in a fishing competition by white USA men then rescued by David Baptiste, a local fisherman who falls in love with her. T: Hey Vina! How are you? It was so good to have a bit of a break ... I say that knowing I haven’t really had a break. I just tend to fill in the time with other things, like sewing or online classes or reading. But it’s been raining so much here in London, I haven’t really gone out to do much of anything. How about you, how has your summer been so far? However, this new life will take a while to adjust and cannot last forever, not when you’ve been cursed by a goddess.

As you can see above, this novel does not need my endorsement but I am going to give it anyway. I listened to the audiobook which worked very well with the structure of this book. A part of it is written as a journal of David Baptiste, a part is narrated in 3rd person and one smaller part, written in free verse, represents the direct thoughts of the mermaidV: I love this unconventional love story, and also the friendship that develops between the two couples, and between Aycayia and Arcadia and Life’s deaf son Reggie. Reggie, who learned American Sign Language, is actually the first person Aycayia has a conversation with. She calls it their “hand language/Language of the time before time,” which I love. And there’s a beautiful scene that takes place during Reggie’s 10th birthday when he introduces her to the music of Bob Marley and Toots and the Maytals — when he turns the volume on the record player, he can hear and dance to the beat of the bass. There’s this part where Aycayia says: The audiobook readers were outstanding — exceptionally great! As was the occasional lovely guitar playing… in between changing voices with our strong female/male alternating voices.

And that passage made me think of how history has perpetuated this line of division between them, even though they’re family. Until Aycayia, David may have never been invited to her house, even when his Uncle Life is Reggie’s dad, and David and Arcadia are cousins. So, one can wonder why, for example, could it be historic guilt on Arcadia’s part why she never invited him? We know throughout the book that this is something she is aware of that she carries with her. But there is another of David’s reflections that hits it home: But when the annual fishing competition takes place on the island, attracting entrants from all over the Caribbean and further afield, including a father and son from Florida, David accidentally leads them in her direction, and they capture Aycayia, after an epic (and wonderfully portrayed) struggle. As they celebrate in the local rum shop, David finds Aycayia hanging from a fish hook, cuts her down and takes her to his house. Monique Roffey is a writer of verve, vibrancy and compassion, and her work is always a joy to read.” —Sarah Hall, author of Burntcoat 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.A joy to read, brimming with memorable characters and vivid descriptions. . . . For me, this was a hugely entertaining and thought-provoking novel.” —Rebecca Jones, BBC News And so I find this quite interesting, to your point, and it’s interesting and telling that this is the conclusion people drew and, to a certain extent continue, to draw about who is displacing the Māori family in the book. We wouldn’t know that this wasn’t her intention if we hadn’t heard it from her in the article. But considering that we did find it too, we found those connections to events happening within our own communities. It’s definitely a point that we could probably spend a whole episode dissecting as it relates to this in literature and being culture bearers. 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. 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 Although it’s funny — I have to say that when I didn’t know anything about the book except for its title, I was a little skeptical that it would be something I’d enjoy. But then I saw the cover art by artist Harriet Shillito for the Peepal Tree edition. And so, it depicts how the Taino mermaid named Aycayia is described in the story: “something ancient … the face of a human woman who once lived centuries past”; “her tail … yards and yards of musty silver … She must weigh four or five hundred pounds”; her tattoos “looked like spirals, and the spirals looked like the moon and the sun,” she must have been “a woman from the tribes that lived in these islands when everything was still a garden.”