Author: Susan Straight
Publisher: Pantheon Books
ISBN 978-0-307-37914-6
Click Here To Purchase Take One Candle Light a Room: A novel
“You
a lie!” someone yells in the opening chapters of this powerful book
about family ties, the notion of home and one woman’s search for
redemption . And in many ways, Fantine Antoine, successful travel writer
and narrator of this book, does feel like one. Secretive about her
origins, camouflaged by a skin tone that confuses most people about her
racial lineage, she makes her home among strangers, distancing herself
from her roots with education and a lifestyle her family can neither
comprehend nor appreciate. For
Fantine's family is bound by ties far stronger than blood – they are
brought together by the shared trauma of rape, decades of racial
prejudice and violence, and the insularity that comes from being unable
to trust anyone outside of their tribe. But though to outward glance she
has walked away from it all, she still wears the scars of her heritage
close, in her inability to commit to relationships, in the distance she
must necessarily keep even from those closest to her.All
this changes, however, when her godson, the academically gifted Victor –
and the one family member who seems to be following in her footsteps -
becomes involved in a random act of gang violence. As she races against
time to reach him and save him from the dark future that claims so many
young black men of his generation, Fantine finds herself reconnecting
with her estranged family and confronting, at last, the memories and
dark secrets she has tried to leave behind. After years of being
invisible in her neutral complexion, carefully chosen clothes and the
privileges her job offers, Fantine discovers, as she drives across
America with her father, the reality of being black , when even an act
as innocent as driving at night comes fraught with danger. “You just a
nigger,”, her father says, a man who has survived great violence and
meted out his version of it. “You not a writer. You with me.You tite
souri (mouse). For them.” And sure enough, despite her laptop and
vocabulary, she is promptly mistaken for a prostitute (“a low-rent Halle
Berry”) by a passing white couple and duly propositioned.At
the heart of this book is the relationship Fantine shares with Victor
- complex, fraught with tension, laced as much with a frail resentment
as it is affection. In many ways, it springs to life only when she
realizes she may lose him. Until the moment this happens, you can sense
a diffidence on her part to bridge the gap she keeps between them, and
his own pained , but silent acceptance of it. She brings him gifts,
expensive mementos from the places she visits, yet is unable to offer
him shelter the one night he needs it the most. For, much as he is like
her, Victor is still a painful reminder of the past for Fantine – his
doomed mother was once her best friend, the secrets of his parents’
death her unshed burden. Growing up, Victor has survived abuse and
severe deprivation, scraping by only because of the largesse of the
clan. Fantine, black sheep of this family, has rarely stepped in to
help him; yet, she notes, as much with pride as regret, she seems to be
the person he wants most to emulate. “People like us were not meant to
measure success in the same way our families did,” Fantine observes.
"We were failures to them.. And now Victor wanted… to be me.” But what
they do have in common is a love of words, and it is this love that
forges the tenuous bond that keeps Fantine on Victor’s tracks as he
hurtles across America towards his doom, with little more than his
cellphone in hand.Fantine
catches up with Victor, only to lose him again as he inexplicably sets
out on an adventure of his own (the one place I thought the plot felt
contrived). Fantine follows again, to finally unearth secrets even she
has remained unaware of. But this time, as she pursues him to New
Orleans, a new danger crosses her path – Hurricane Katrina.As
a writer Straight is known for her extraordinary ear for dialogue, and
‘Take One Candle..’ segues effortlessly between patois , street jargon
and Fantine’s articulate, writerly voice. ( ‘You made me fall in
love,’ a professor tells FX after reading her work. ) Through the
anguished inner voice of her protagonist, and the stories of the
resilient men and women who came before her, Straight does more. In an
essay about Haitians who dared raise their voice against political
oppression, writer Edwidge Danticat defines ‘ guapa’ - the ‘courageous
beauty’ she sees in the actions of these artists, writers and
activists. Straight shows us her ‘guapa’ too, returning with ‘Take One
Candle..’ to issues she has so eloquently examined in her earlier books –
race; prejudice; the burden of painful cultural memory and its
crippling effects across generations; the weight of love, often as
damaging as it is redemptive.Click Here To Purchase Take One Candle Light a Room: A novel