Book Review…An imaginative stroll through life’s thorny path

Feb 04, 2018 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: COME LET US SING ANYWAY
Author: Leone Ross
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby

Against the backdrop of London’s hustle and bustle, Jamaica’s quaintness and intemperance, and Africa’s desperation, Leone Rose peers into painful, woeful human experiences that demand reflection. We identify with Rose’s characters, all hamstrung by Fate. Still, they resist, invariably determined to stay afloat.
We encounter Mrs Neecy Brown in ‘Love Silk Food,’ Rose’s opening salvo. Her life is weighed down by her philandering, mendacious husband; her tolerance, forbearance and silence in the face of duplicity speaking volumes. She has borne many children for this man, her putative husband, but a leopard cannot change its spots. She must endure, finding comfort, relevance in a complete stranger. “My, how they have talked! Not easy; she can’t remember the last time she spoke to a man who was listening.”
And exploitation, abuse, narcissism and the ultimate tragedy just about define the edgy and cutting, ‘Roll It.’
We get a snapshot of the precarious world of fashion and its vexing abuse.
“Him beat her because him love her.” The designer has picked his girl, she too is a model. She withstands his seething jealously, his wrath.” His name is Parker. We learn that he “usually hides the damage to her scalp, in the left of her buttocks and between her thighs…The bruises are purple and yellow and black; fist-sized lumps across her shoulders [and] there is a bruise on her left foot.”
But soon he will get his comeuppance, sadly, though, at the expense of others.
In ‘Drag’ the most libidinous of fantasies are laid bare. It speaks to the inner chambers of the mind more often locked and guarded against social indictment. But the mind is clever and can act out the most revolting of fantasies – in private – unfettered and unrestrained by normative values.
Beyond risqué, ‘Drag’ is raunchy, raw, sexually explicit, with language so acerbic that it’s really an all-out assault on civility and human decency. Still, it raises key questions on the weight of sexual fantasies on the human will. In some regards, though, it’s liberating, a revolt against social mores.
‘Art, for f–k sake’ seemingly continues in like vein. But both narratives are worlds apart. “Art” crescendos with an explosive sexual scene – a ménage à trois. Still, it’s artfully presented. Somehow, lasciviousness, pure carnality are absent. A novelist and two artists learn each other’s sensibilities. For months they work, play and laugh together. There is a deep-rooted philosophical and kinetic connection. Here, sex is never profane, appearing magical, almost sacred.
Ross delivers a terse, haunting narrative in ‘Echo.’ She lucidly comments on the existential crisis besetting young black men. Like a plague that unrepentantly slashes the lifespan of its victims, gun violence, drugs and turf wars have strafed black communities. And for effect, Ross recalls the many names that have succumbed to this scourge.
And in rich Jamaican argot, bystanders lament the killing of innocence.
“Imagine, dem jus’ kill di gyal fi no reason. Say dem t’ink she know one a dem gunman who operate through Port Antonio. All di gyal do is stand up deh next to di gunman bwoy and police come open fire pin di two a dem like she name calataral damage.”
The mood lightens, somewhat, in the enthrallingly jocular and entertaining ‘President Daisy.’ Here, anxiety brims for a girl traveling by train to a new home. She befriends an atypical and vivacious man who finds himself warding off rebarbative attacks of a stranger. In an ironic twist, it is President Daisy, called a “bloodclaat batty bwoy” repeatedly by the aggressor, who emerges victorious in the queerest of duels.
Africa’s travails are unmasked in ‘Minty Minty.’ Babies are sold to tourists craving motherhood. Buying and selling babies in Africa is risky business. Meanwhile, “there will be hundreds of children calling you [as] tourists threw the sweets out, into hands, bouncing off heads, and the children scrabbled in the dirt…It was like feeding animals in the zoo.” This is Africa at its worst.
And in ‘Mudman,’ fortuity and tragedy switch places every so often for a husband and wife. Tragedy reigns – a bloody one at that. Their kidnapped and sexually abused child returns to a once happy family expectedly traumatized, angry, confused and guilt-ridden. It is a guilt that destroys all in its path. Rehabilitation is arduous and tedious. All the love in the world cannot erase this parasitic pain. Alas, only death can cleanse the family of this haunting, living memory of a child’s ordeal.
Undoubtedly, Rose has imaginatively and deftly explored the experiential minefields confronting her characters. Their present and the future are dubious like their past, but remarkably, most of them remain dogged, resilient, seldom cowed by life’s blows. Despite all, “they sing anyway.”

Feedback: glenvilleashby@ gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
Come let us sing along anyway and other short stories by Leone Ross 2017
ISBN: 9781845233341
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd
Available at Amazon
Ratings: Recommend

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