July 19, 2021
Jones (Mosquito) reemerges after a 21-year hiatus with an epic and inventive saga that weaves together magic, mythology, and Portuguese colonial history. Eight-year-old Almeyda is enslaved on a 17th-century Brazilian plantation when her enslaver welcomes a man who seeks the blood of a Black virgin for a cure. While an herbal drink from her mother serves as protection, the price for it comes heavy as the mother is sold and separated from her. Later, as a young woman, Almeyda is rescued and taken to Palmares, a hidden settlement for freedom seekers. There, she is chosen by settlement member Anninho and the two are married. Soon after, Palmares is razed by Portuguese soldiers and its leader, King Zumbi, is killed. While in the soldiers’ custody, Almeyda wakes to find her husband gone. Determined to reunite with him, Almeyda escapes again to journey through Brazil. She hears of a New Palmares and that Zumbi’s spirit may still be alive, perhaps transformed into a bird, and apprentices with a medicine woman who knows Anninho and gives her a lead on his whereabouts. The magical elements are difficult to get an initial purchase on, as they aren’t given much explanation, but Jones brings her established incisiveness and linguistic flair to the horrifyingly accurate portrayal of racial struggle. All in all, it’s a triumphant return.
September 1, 2021
After a 21-year absence, Jones makes a strong return with a mesmerizing epic of late-seventeenth-century Brazil. Her narrator is a Black woman, Almeyda, a name spelled differently than that of a former Portuguese colonial governor (de Almeida), as she tells people who note the similarity. Educated by a priest on the plantation where she is enslaved as a child, Almeyda soaks up stories and keenly observes everything. Following many significant and traumatic life changes, she flees to Palmares, a legendary community promising liberty for the enslaved, and marries her husband there. After Palmares is demolished, Almeyda's husband is lost in the violence, and she travels widely to find him, hoping that he survived. Jones' storytelling exerts a powerful pull, and readers will achieve complete immersion in a setting in which African and Indigenous cultures are memorably delineated. Through richly woven prose, Almeyda's journey compels reflection on how freedom must always be defended and how women bear extra societal burdens. Mystical sequences give the plot additional depth and texture. While drawn-out in parts, Jones' novel is a superb reclamation of the historical novel.
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Starred review from August 15, 2021
A legendary African American novelist returns with her first novel in 22 years, an epic adventure of enchantment, enslavement, and the pursuit of knowledge in 17th-century Brazil. Jones' compelling narrator is Almeyda, an enslaved girl who learned to read and write not just in Portuguese, but in English and other languages. This gives her a wide perspective on her surroundings that allows her more curiosity and sophistication than other Blacks in bondage and, for that matter, many of the Whites holding dominion over her. Whether it's the imperious Father Tollinare, a White priest partly responsible for Almeyda's education, or her grandmother Ituiba, who seems irrational to just about everybody except Almeyda, the people who populate Almeyda's tumultuous coming-of-age are as rife with mystery and complexity as the surrounding landscape with its dense forests, treacherous terrain, and wildly diverse human outposts. As Almeyda is sold to different masters and different plantations, her circle of acquaintances widens to include more exotic European visitors (including an eccentric lexicographer helping Tollinare publish a new Portuguese dictionary and a British travel writer packing some of Jane Austen's gimlet wit) and many more Black and native Brazilians, some enslaved, some free; some cursed with delusions, touched by genius, or linked to sorcery. She finds love and liberation with a charismatic Muslim named Martim Anninho, whom she marries and accompanies to the novel's (real-life) eponymous refuge for fugitive slaves. The community is besieged and then destroyed by war, and Almeyda, separated in the chaos from Anninho, embarks on a long and perilous mission to locate a "New Palmares" and find her husband. As with the most ambitious and haunting of magical realist sagas, Jones' novel recounts detail after detail with such fluidity that the reader is aware of time's passage without knowing how many years have gone by. And by this novel's end, you're made aware that there is far more of Almeyda's and Anninho's saga to come. Those familiar with Corregidora (1975) and Eva's Man (1976) will not be surprised by the sustained intensity of both imagery and tone. There is also sheer wonder, insightful compassion, and droll wit to be found among the book's riches. Jones seems to have come through a life as tumultuous as her heroine's with her storytelling gifts not only intact, but enhanced and enriching. It is marvelous, in every sense, to have a new Gayl Jones novel to talk about.
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