12/01/01

Writing heals. This is the simplest way I can summarise what, in my reading, Erika N. Colin’s début novel foregrounds. The novel, set in our day, depicts the crisis and the rebirth of a large Afro-American family from the States. Despite the third person narration the main point of view seems to be that of main character Lisette Auburn: a daughter, a granddaughter, a cousin, a niece, a lover. Lisette appears to be modelled on the author (on the basis of what we can learn about her on the website www.erikancolin.com). I had the impression that the book could have easily been written with Lisette as a narrator. I can testify to this by the following simple reading experience: when I put down a book for a few days, I didn’t remember – when taking it up again - whether it was narrated in the first or the third person. Nevertheless, the third person narration is reasonably opted for, since the narrator seems to be omniscient – a voice that appears to know all the secrets of the family which voice obviously cannot be that of Lisette. It is her desire that is fulfilled to the utmost with a happy ending and wedding to the almost Harlequin/Mills and Boon hero-like Tré.

The family has to recover from the trauma of Reyna’s death, who is Lisette’s aunt and the youngest member of the middle-aged generation. They lose Reyna to suicide induced by ovarian cancer. Even though it looks as though Reyna’s death, the D-day of the family, has started a chain of troublesome and tragic events, it is also the different apparitions of the deceased family member in the lives of the rest of the family that helps heal the wounds.

The elders (also mentioned as the Authorities) form a mass-like group at the beginning. By the end, however, they all acquire their own faces. From ‘expensive cattle’ (17) they become a family not only surviving but thriving, with well-defined personalities. The process is illustrated by the weakening and strengthening of the family tree (there are different occurrences of ‘the family tree’ in the novel, even in the epitaph, which is one of Colin’s poems, entitled "Broken").

In the center is not only the simple question of forbears or the usual ‘generation gap’ syndrome. It is also about how one can relate to the community and the tradition into which she has been socialized.

For as long as anyone could remember, as an Auburn one was raised with specific morals and ideals that were not to be altered. Each generation learned the family’s history. Every elder took his or her turn reciting tales of Auburn struggle and victory, with known family history reaching back to the eighteenth century The indoctrination began early (5).

The family needs to adjust their value system to the current changes in society. A key episode from the novel highlighting this fact is how Lisette’s favorite cousin Richard has to face his father’s ire and disowning, having coming out as gay. This family tradition is not only about facts and figures of their history, it also consists of the sliced turkey smothered in great-grandmother’s gravy, the monogrammed cloth napkin and the blanket crocheted by great-grandma.

In a similar vein, N. Colin’s language abounds in imagery suggesting tender parenting. Within the idiolect of the novel one can discern numerous instances of poetic imagery, for example, "It [the wind] was comforting like an old love worn blanket (8)." Similarly, flowers in the cemetery form a fresh blanket (16). The recurrent motif of rocking, in connection with both mothering and fathering is also worth a mention, e.g. Bennett, the grandfather presents the comforting cuddle of the pater familias at crucial points of the plot. Other metaphoric expressions shed light on a sense of belonging, which is a crucial theme of the novel. When Lisette’s father was at war, his partner’s (Lydia’s) "letters were like home for him (11)."

At certain points the book definitely recalls the characteristics of pornographic writing. The most illustrative example may be the passage when Lisette and her ideally perfect boyfriend Tré engage in somewhat of a telephone sex conversation.

Despite the merits of the book, one can often notice the unevenness of the narrative voice, which disappoints at least my readerly expectations, e.g. "It was written in her blood, in her DNA (4)" Or: "Did he [God] just have a sick sense of humor or did he just not give a shit?" Sentences like these seem to stick out from what one expects to be fiction.