A love story lays bare the soul of humanity

Dec 01, 2019 Book Review…, News

Book: The Mermaid of Black Conch
Author: Monique Roffey
Critic: Glenville Ashby, PhD

The Mermaid of Black Conch is an enthralling dialogue between lovers, a dialogue estranged from all conventionality. A communication between two hearts, literally. No words, just a silence that speaks to the protean character of language. Twin flames they are, their heartbeat in tandem. It is a love affair unhinged by a strange force of nature, unhinged, but very much entombed with uncharted emotions.
There is a defining paradox to Monique Roffey’s work that is unveiled by her well-crafted characters: David Baptiste, Miss Rain, Reggie, and the Claysons, to name a handful.
Roffey, with deciduous timing intertwines prose with verse, and the present with the past, creating a well-weaved literary tapestry in the process.
At the outset, David Baptiste recalls capturing the heart of a mermaid, a most unlikely catch. His encounter mystifies.
“Then there was her tail. Oh Laa-aad-o. The things a man could see, especially if he connect with nature, and live close to sea.
“I saw that part of this creature from my boat. Yards and yards of musty silver. It gave she a look of power, like she grow out of the tail itself. When I see her first, I reckon she come from some half-space in God’s great order, like she was from a time when all creatures were getting designed.”
The author adds to the intrigue: “The music brought her to him, not the engine sound…It was the magic that music makes, the song that lives within every creature on earth, including mermaids…She was irresistibly drawn up to the surface, real slow and real interested. That morning David played her soft hymns he’d learnt as a boy, praising God. He sang holy songs for her, songs that brought tears to his eyes.”
Amid passion, unbridled selflessness and the enviable attribute of loving and caring beyond comprehension, there is naked greed and a reckless cupidity portrayed by Thomas Clayson, a trenchant, cold figure bent on selling the mermaid Aycayia to the highest bidder or at least hoisting her carcass as a trophy for his arduous efforts. The capture, more like an assault on nature, by a coterie of uncouth men is revolting.
“Did you see her? Hell, yes
Did you see her tits?
Hell, yes.
Did you see her face?
Yes
Did you see her arms?
Yes
Did you see her…pu**y bone?
All the men nodded to this
“We could sell her to The Smithsonian…Or the Rockefeller Institute. For research.”
Poetically, Aycayia recalls this harrowing ordeal:
“Something strong on the surface pulling me back
My throat was on fire with hurt
I was strangling myself
I was drowning in the sea
I jump up high to show them they had caught me
David, oh them Yankee men catch me
When I thought it was you
They ketch me good
David where are you?
You are not there any more
Please find this letter I put in a bottle.”
Surely, the struggle to capture Aycayia, the striking creature of the ocean is dramatic, hours of a relentless tug of war that pits the worst of the human spirit against a frightened creature whose only misstep was venturing to find her angler, her love.
Her captors, those that defile innocence with their cheap, brutish exploits will stand before their conscience, their imminent judge, and a stony, unremitting judge it will be. Some will be riddled with guilt, left addlepated and incoherent, their only balm being alcohol.
Only the stoicism of Miss Rain, a generationally wealthy landowner can defy the hooliganism of Thomas Clayson.
His son, Hank, a milquetoast, struggles to define himself, to find redemption from his father’s toxicity.
Baptiste rescues Aycayia, his valiant effort pays off and seals their love, a love that must outlast the strangulating culture that pervades Black Conch, made arid by broken dreams and exploitation. Cursed is Black Conch, many believe.
Expectedly, the love between Baptiste and Aycayia is stonewalled as the half-dead mermaid is nursed to life; a Brobdingnagian effort if there was ever one.
Before his eyes, she sheds her scaly corpus, losing her tail in the process, a dramatic metamorphosis, slow and wrenching, messy and mephitic.
There is no happy conclusion. The search for the mermaid will continue and her change from mermaid to an indigenous woman of history – “cursed centuries ago by some women, for her beauty,” is ephemeral.
Roffey’s work thrives on a deontological underbelly that unveils our potential for the sacred and the profane.
Of the soul of humanity, we learn from Baptiste’s persnickety diary that speaks of his perpetual haunting. His writings of January 2016 prove that much. “I still see her naked body swinging from a vine from that giant tree in the forest. My heart went dead in my chest and I bawl ‘No’ and ran to her.”
The Mermaid of Black Conch ends as it began, with the principal actors amid a cacophony of riveting events. And central is Baptiste, Aycayia, and Miss Rain. It is a climatic conclusion, a fluid love story that leaves us with our mouths agape.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

Book: The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
©2020 Monique Roffey
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd
ISBN 13: 9781845234577
Availability: Amazon UK
Ratings: Recommended