Soucouyant
By David Chariandy
Arsenal Pulp Press
“Mango graham and mango vere. Mango teen and mango zabicco. And mango starch….” Soucouyant’s narrator ponders the irony that his mother, a Trinidadian immigrant struggling with senility, can “remember the countless varieties of a fruit that doesn’t even grow in this land, but she can’t accomplish the most everyday of tasks.” The 15-year-old escapes to Toronto in an effort to forget, but like mango subspecies, bolts of remembrance—his own history, his neighbours’, his mother Adele’s—interrupt. When he returns to his childhood home on the Scarborough Bluffs, he finds a stubborn caretaker, Meera. Together, the three attempt to keep what’s left of the family intact.
Embedded in an atmosphere of contradictions, Adele’s understanding of objects, places and meanings becomes insecure. The narrator traces his mother’s dementia to a childhood encounter with a soucouyant, a Trinidadian evil spirit. By the novel’s end, Chariandy exposes paradoxes as more than the puzzlements of an old woman, but as parts of the Canadian landscape itself—like how a snowbank can feel like heat on a bare limb.
The Vancouverite’s first novel was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. At times tangled and night-sick and at others hilariously lucid, Soucouyant is a fast, true read that leaves an indelible impression. —Nora Tennessen
