Published by Harper Perennial, 2008, 452 pages.

“[I]n the villages above the canes people did not die. As long as memory lived they did not. They passed. Leaving always something of themselves behind. John Seegal, their grandfather, had passed most of himself over to Birdie, except for the thieving ways, o’course, which came from a great-grand-uncle… And the long-gone aunts, the grandmothers, the uncles were there with them right now. They were scattered among the children the way the leaves of a forest tree became the flesh of other plants around it.”

This is the story of Pynter Bender, a child with blue eyes who was born blind, a child who is one of twins. Pynter was born on an island in the Caribbean, in a village called Old Hope, up in the mountains near the cane fields. The island used to be colonized and the people laboured as slaves on the cane fields, when “de man who own de cane own de people too”.

When Pynter is 10 years old, he is sent to a healer who restores his sight. But his early blindness marks him. His grandmother, Deeka, does not think he will survive for long. Pynter—either because he was once blind, or because he has the thought of death hanging over him—is an observant child and intuits more than his twin brother Peter.

Pynter’s home revolves around the Bender women: the matriarch of the family Deeka, his mother Elena, and his aunts Tan Cee and Patty. He has an uncle, Birdie, but Birdie is away a great deal, often in prison. John Seegal, Pynter’s grandfather, walked out one day and never came back. Although Deeka has waited for his return all these years, she never says why he left. Those who have gone live on in stories told by Deeka to her family, with the telling of the story changing slightly depending on her mood.

Peter is jealous of his twin, whom he sees as special. But when they are adults, Pynter tells his twin what it is like to be him. “Cuz you never had nobody tell you that you not natural, you not born to live, you not good for much ’ceptin for yourself. My life been like a line you draw in de dust with your toe that any wind or any absent-minded hand or foot could rub right off like dat, as if I had never been there. They talk about me only in the present or in the past. What I am; what I was. I don’t invite no future tense because what’s the use if I not going to be there for long? So they build everything around you. It always there in their words, in their expectations, in their idea of the future of this family.”

But Pynter does have a role to play in his family’s future. Deeka believes that Pynter is the reincarnation of an ancestor called Zed Bender, a slave who tried to run away but was caught by the slave owner and killed. Zed refused to kneel before the owner, and cursed him before he died, promising that someday he would return. Pynter knows the story, but does not know what Zed threatened to do when he returned.

Pynter grows up, surrounded by the Bender women and their stories, observing everything that happens.

There is growing discontent on the island with the ruler, Victor, a man whom the islanders initially supported because he showed them a better way to live, “why food was less important than a wage and all of the things that tied them and their children to the land”. But over the years, Victor became a despot, cracking down on dissent. The man who is responsible for torturing the dissenters is Inspector Sylus. When the men return from Sylus’s prison—if they return—they are shadows of their former selves. 

Pynter gets involved in the freedom movement, which his cousin Paso is leading. Maybe this is what Zed intended to do when he returned—rid his land of a despot.

This is just a brief summary. The story itself is rich, as rich as the stories the women tell. It is not just the story of Pynter’s growing up, but also that of the islanders’ political awakening. And running through it all is the cane: sharp, sweet and all-consuming. Men dream of leaving—going away to another life, going “there”: “‘There’ was anywhere a man could turn his back on cane.” But when Pynter and the rebels try to escape the police, “[i]t was the canes that saved them every time…the readiness with which they slipped their saw-edged leaves into exposed skin and drew deep-throated curses from the soldiers… It was the maliciousness with which their prickles, white as filaments of glass, would bury themselves in the soldiers’ eyes and nostrils. The wickedness of cane saved them every time.”

I have read Jacob Ross’s crime novels set in Grenada, which I enjoyed, but this is on a different scale. This book should be a classic. It pulls you into its world: the characters jump off the page, and the island is vividly described. Pynter’s world is very much a woman’s world: the women dominate, while most of the men are unreliable and feckless.  

The writing is evocative, both in the way Ross describes Old Hope but also in the way he writes about emotions and the big themes: life and death, pain and joy. I found Pynter Bender hard to put down, but it is not a fast-paced thriller: Ross takes the time to develop the story and the characters. This is a book to be savoured.

A remarkable read.

Read the Talking About Books interview with Jacob Ross.