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The Pages of the Sea
A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024
On a Caribbean island in the mid-1960s, a young girl copes with the heavy cost of migration.
When her mother emigrates to England to find work, Wheeler and her older sisters are left to live with their aunts and cousins. She spends most days with her cousin Donelle, knocking about their island community. They know they must address their elders properly and change their shoes after church. And during the long, quiet weeks of Lent, when the absent sound of the radio seems to follow them down the road, they look forward to kite season. But Donelle is just a child, too, and though her sisters look after her with varying levels of patience, Wheeler couldn’t feel more alone. Everyone tells her that soon her mother will send for her, but how much longer will it be? And as she does her best to navigate the tensions between her aunts, why does it feel like there’s no one looking out for her at all?
A story of sisterhood, secrets, and the sacrifices of love, The Pages of the Sea is a tenderly lyrical portrait of innocence and an intensely moving evocation of what it’s like to be a child left behind.
Praise for The Pages of the SeaHawks comingofage story follows a young girl whos left with her sisters on an unnamed Caribbean island in the 1960s under the care of their aunts and cousins after their mother sails to England in search of work as part of the socalled Windrush generationGlobe and Mail The Globe 100A finely observed debutEmily Donaldson Globe and MailThe writing is confident and precise evocative of the beauty of the Caribbean and full of sparkling observationThe GuardianA moving portrayal of a young girls efforts to grow out of a state of melancholy and confusion and acquire selfconfidence and assertiveness despite her young ageOttawa Review of BooksHawks prose is beautiful a lyrical and loving portrayal of an island and its people A unique scrappy tender bildungsromanKirkus ReviewsThe Pages of the Sea a beautifully written and intimately imagined debut novel coming out of the Caribbean Anne Hawk weaves a story rarely told that of those left behind in the wake of migration to the motherland Intensely moving and lyrical here is a story of our times another piece of the mosaic of our fractured and remade Caribbean livesMonique Roffey author of The Mermaid of Black ConchA stunning debut Its great to see a new author championing in fiction the unheard voice of a child left behind in the Caribbean migration story of the 1960s Beautifully told The Pages of the Sea will resonate for many thousandsYvonne BaileySmith author of The Day I Fell Off My IslandAn evocative and at times heartbreaking work of Caribbean fiction filled with the colours and vibrancy of the islands and invested with a deeply personal humanity In The Pages of the Sea Anne Hawk gives fresh form to the Windrush era and voice to its neglected narrativesAnthony Joseph winner of the TS Eliot Prize for PoetryWhat can I say except I think this is a great novel The story breaks your heart and at the very same time the writing heals it Anne Hawks vision is miraculously tenderly lucid Here is the other side of emigrationthe story of one of those left behind representing the stories of so many I cant think of a better depiction of the confusions and insights of girlhoodToby Litt author of Patience
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Details
Dimensions:
312 Pages
7.75in * 5in * .88in
300.00gr
Published:
September 17, 2024
Publisher:
ISBN:
9781771966535
Featured In:
Language:
eng
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