Review: Even in Paradise, Elizabeth Nunez

Okay, Elizabeth Nunez got me good about two-thirds of the way through her latest book, Even in Paradise (affiliate links: Book Depository, Amazon).

As a writer from my homeland put it in her fictionalized version of a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban: Pass [the Miranda test] and I believe you. Fail it and all you say about the races being equal, that character, not color, is what matters, becomes theoretical.

I was like, Oo, a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban? SOUNDS GREAT, and I googled it thinking probably Cesaire, and while Cesaire did in fact write a play that retells The Tempest, the narrator of Even in Paradise was in fact referring to Nunez’s own 2006 novel, Prospero’s Daughter.

You got me, Elizabeth Nunez. You got me good.

If Elizabeth Nunez wanted to make it her thing to retell all the Shakespeare plays with Caribbean settings, I’d be here for it. Even in Paradise is a retelling of King Lear: Wealthy white Peter Ducksworth has moved from Trinidad to Barbados — the cynical say to find white husbands for his three daughters — and now, a few years later, he has decided to divide his properties among his daughters now, to avoid future strife. Strife ensues anyway.

So, as I confessed to Whiskey Jenny on our most recent podcast, I’ve never read or seen King Lear. What I know of King Lear has come to me through cultural osmosis, and as such I can’t speak much to the manner in which Nunez adapts it. I assume the Cordelia character was a drip on purpose? As a nod to the original?

In fact Even in Paradise reminded me of nothing so much as The Great Gatsby. Like Nick Carraway, our narrator Emile is drawn into the lives of the careless rich by his friendship with a man making an unwise romantic decision — in this case, Emile’s friend Albert has contracted a hasty engagement with Glynis Duckworth.¹ Also like Gatbsy, it’s the story of people who cannot un-entwine love from money in their own minds, let alone in their lives and actions; and, of course, it ends in tragedy.

(Less tragedy than King Lear, however! I understand Lear has some eye stuff?)

Though Even in Paradise isn’t, on the surface, the type of book I would expect to enjoy (I read it because some blogger sometime years ago spoke well of Elizabeth Nunez and her name stuck in my head), I ended up thinking it was terrific. The inheritance plotline focuses on land owned by the Duckworths and the plans of the two older sisters to develop it into a profitable hotel that will exclude local people from making use of it, as they have for years. Nunez never permits her readers to shut their eyes to the specters of slavery and oppression that haunt Trinidad’s and Barbados’s history and continue to inform the lives and motives of these characters. She’s thoughtful about race and prejudice and history in a way that I absolutely love, and I will definitely be checking out her Tempest adaptation later this year.

Lebanese Diaspora Watch: So you know how a while ago, I instituted the Lebanese Diaspora Watch? Because I read about Lebanese citizens in Liberia and Brazil in rapid succession and was totally baffled? NOT A FLUKE. Here we find a Lebanese diaspora in Trinidad too!

Georges Glazal, Albert’s father, belonged to a long line of Syrian Lebanese families who were among the last immigrants to Trinidad during the colonial era. Syrians, we called them, whether they were from Syria or Lebanon, Lebanon having been part of Syria when the first immigrants arrived on the island. Almost all of them were Orthodox Maronite Christians fleeing persecution from the ever-widening spread of Islam across the Middle East. In Trinidad the Maronite Syrian-Lebanese immigrants joined the Catholic Church.

See, now this answers my first question of why this specific Lebanese population left Lebanon/Syria. I had to do some googling to discover why Trinidad in particular, and the internet suggests it was Trinidad because wicked ticketing agents sold these immigrants tickets to America but then instead sent them to the Caribbean. And the immigrants would be like, Well, shit. Here we are, I guess. I admit that once I found this explanation, I stopped fact-checking. That is the explanation that I want to be true. Substantial Lebanese-American diaspora in Trinidad solely because of trickery. What a weird world we have.

Is anyone an Elizabeth Nunez fan? If you inherited land from a family member, what would you use it for? (Don’t say hotel. That sounds horrible. That sounds like so much trouble.) (No, say hotel if hotel is what you’d do with it.)