The Bridge of Beyond (New York Review Books Classics) in Around the World

Mar 31, 2015 Claire rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world, translated, favorites, guadeloupean-literature, fiction, women-of-colour-2016, caribbean-literature, around-the-world-2016

Absolutely brilliant, astonishing, loved it, it was my Outstanding Read of 2016.

Telumee is the last in a line of proud Lougandor women on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe.
In the first part we learn about her people, her mother Victory,

"a laundress, wearing out her wrists on flat stones in the rivers, and her linen emerged like new from under the heavy waxed irons"

her father, his life cut short in a fatal stabbing,

"Angebert, had led a reserved and silent existence, effacing himself so

Absolutely brilliant, astonishing, loved it, it was my Outstanding Read of 2016.

Telumee is the last in a line of proud Lougandor women on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe.
In the first part we learn about her people, her mother Victory,

"a laundress, wearing out her wrists on flat stones in the rivers, and her linen emerged like new from under the heavy waxed irons"

her father, his life cut short in a fatal stabbing,

"Angebert, had led a reserved and silent existence, effacing himself so completely
that no one ever knew who it was died that day. Sometimes I wonder about him, ask myself what anyone so kind and gentle was doing in this world at all."

the man who pulled her mother out of her grief, and out of her daughter's life

The fact is that a mere nothing, a thought, a whim, a particle of dust can change the course of a life. If Haut-Colbi had not stopped in the village my little story would have been different."

and her grandmother Toussine, 'Queen Without a Name', to whom her mother sent her to live,

My mother's reverence for Toussine was such I came to regard her as some mythical being not of this world, so that for me she was legendary even while still alive."

Every change of home, village, or great journey takes them across the Bridge of Beyond, a symbol of change and the unknown, the other side.

Telumee narrates the story of her life, in small details, in melodic, incantatory prose that lures the reader in, consuming her story with great pleasure.

As she passes through various stages of life, she is guided but never pressured by her grandmother, remembering her stories, her songs, her advice,

"My little ember", she'd whisper, "if you ever get on a horse, keep good hold of the reins so that its not the horse that rides you." And as I clung to her, breathing in her nutmeg smell, Queen Without a Name would sigh, caress me, and go on, distinctly, as if to engrave the words on my mind: "Behind one pain, there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn't ride you, you must ride it."

She will fall in love, leave to work in the kitchen of wealthy white family, build her own home, experience both profound happiness and the depths of despair, brush up against madness and find its cure, and always the reassuring presence of her grandmother.

Sometimes old thoughts arose in me, shooting up like whirls of dust raised from the road by a herd of wild horses galloping by. The Grandmother to try to whistle up a wind for me, saying we should soon be going away, for the air in Fond-Zombi didn't agree with my lungs now.

As Jamaica Kincaid articulates well in the introduction, The Bridge of Beyond is not a conventional novel, and it never tries to be. It is a fluid, unveiling of a life, and a way of life, lived somewhere between a past that is not forgotten, that time of slavery lamented in the songs and felt in the bones, and a present that is a struggle and a joy to live, alongside nature, the landscape, the community and their traditions.

The cultural traditions and historical events from which this work of art springs cannot be contained in a strict linear narrative. In fact, such a device might even lend a veneer of inevitability to them. For the narrative that began with a search for fresh water on an island one Sunday morning has no end - it circles back on itself, it begins again, it staggers sideways, it never lurches forward to a conclusion in which the world where it began is suddenly transformed into an ideal, new world. Schwarz-Bart's prose awakens the senses and enlarges the imagination; it makes me anxious for my own sanity and yet at the same time certain of it; her sentences, rooted in Creole experience and filled with surprising insights and proverbs, resonate in my head and heart." Jamaica Kincaid

It is one of the best books I have read in a long time, coming from a place of love and appreciation that reaches far back, acknowledging the gifts of all, that make up who we are. Outstanding. ...more

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Aug 20, 2013 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nyrb, read2013, location-guadaloupe, netgalley, ebooks, around-the-world

I received a galley of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not alter my opinions of the work.

This book is a great capture of life on a Caribbean island not too long ago dominated by slavery. Strong female characters, with parts and chapters focusing on different stories from their lives, but very reflective of the hardships in their unique situation. My favorite element was the relationship between Telumee ("Mama Miracle") and her grandmother ("Queen Without a Name.") ...more

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Dec 14, 2024 Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 52-book-club-2024, short, translated, around-the-world-challenge-2024, historical-fiction, read-in-2024, caribbean, around-the-world, family-saga, guadeloupe

“Behind one pain there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn’t ride you, you must ride it.”

This is a beautifully written book set in Guadeloupe by Guadeloupean French author Simone Schwarz-Bart. It follows the generations of the Lougandor women and deals with love and loss, resilience and the after effects of slavery.

Télumée is raised by her wise and strong grandmother Toussine, who she calls Queen Without a Name. Her life shifts between delight and tragedy and back, hig ...more

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