Book: The Bone Readers by Jacob Ross

Pages: 270

Context

Grenada is a beautiful island country in the Caribbean that became the playground of imperialist powers. First the French, then the British, and finally the United States. It switched hands between the French and the British many times, and once independent, its alignment with the Cuban revolutionaries led to the 1983 Operation Urgent Fury (lol), a U.S-led invasion of the tiny island.

At the time, it was touted as a “flagrant violation of international law and of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity”1 of Grenada by the United Nation’s General Assembly, especially since the invasion hinged mostly on the fact that Grenada was building a runway that could accommodate international flights, and, according to Ronald Reagan, Soviet aircrafts.

While Cuba did help with the construction, it was designed by a Canadian, built by a London-based firm, and partially financed by the UK government. The operation, the largest military operation for the U.S since the Vietnam War, marked Grenada as one of the many countries that felt the interventionist policies spurred by Cold War proxy warfare.

In The Bone Readers, our main character, Michael Digson, makes reference to the “upheavals of ‘83,” but also those of ‘74, ‘76, ‘79, ‘99, and the disappearances and unanswered questions that they left behind. In a country of just over 120,000 people, uncovering one mystery can lead to more questions than answers.

About the book

Grief and loss are the main threads that lead us through the years in which The Bone Readers takes place. A crime thriller on a small Caribbean island named Camaho — a clear stand-in for Grenada — our protagonist is convinced (or coerced) to join the police force and in doing so find answers about his mother’s murder and disappearance.

One case becomes two, becomes three, and suddenly the interconnected nature of the disappearances on this small island become very apparent. There is no immediate payoff in The Bone Readers. It is what solving a crime generally is — a harrowing, time-consuming job that is rarely healing for anyone involved. They are complicated, full of bureaucratic and political roadblocks, and often given up on.

Through Michael Digson, Jacob Ross is able to provide a surprisingly rich insight into the country’s culture on a very personal level. His characters are well-developed, interesting, and engaging. His use of the local patois (Grenadian Creole) for the dialogue was a phenomenal way to give characters more authenticity and dimension. Ross’s writing is poetic, his descriptions transporting you directly onto the island while our characters navigate the complexities of unraveling secrets in a society where everyone is privy to secrets and no one wants to be the one to face them.

The investigation’s pace seemed to be an embodiment of grief. At times aggressively present and unavoidable, completely altering Digson’s daily life, demanding to be acknowledged and felt. While other times it’s so far in his periphery that he almost (almost!) forgets it’s there. Regardless, one moves on. You move forward with the hope that answers will lessen the pain, until you realize the pain is part of the deal. Finding the bodies doesn’t lessen the burden of the lives that were lost, but it does seem to provide a way forward.

Beyond the book

Grenada has a rich culture of storytelling influenced by West African traditions and Protestant Christianity, creating an interesting mix of beliefs and traditions - many of which are shared across the Caribbean. When it comes to exemplifying such an interesting blend, art provides an invaluable insight. Grenada’s arguably most famous artist, Canute Caliste, is a perfect example of this.

Caliste, whose work is seen above, claimed to have seen a mermaid in his youth that inspired him to create art. More specifically, “he was told by a vision of a mermaid that, if he followed the Bible, he could achieve anything he wanted.”2 A perfect representation of the fusion of West African folklore and Christianity that shapes the lives of the local population.

Caliste spent his eccentric life creating an astounding amount of paintings, to mixed reviews. Some thought he was a genius, most seemed to think their children could do better. Nevertheless, his art was sold around the world. He was widely loved on the island, and was said to create so many paintings to maintain his 22 children and over 100 grandchildren.

Caliste rarely left the island, and even his paintings depicting the revolution of 1974 were taken from “his imagination and television images,” as he lived on the island of Carriacou, not the main island of Grenada, and didn’t actually witness the upheavals. He dedicated his life to depicting the wonders of life on his native Carriacou. Abroad, his pieces would sell for anywhere from $200-$3.000, but he was known to sell them for $10 on the island, and would frequently run a 2x1 deal.

You can still get his pieces at auction houses around the world.

Favourite quotes:

“… walk careful, because if you walk too hard, you going to stir up snake.”

“‘Them pirates were heroes in Francis Drake and Captain Morgan time. But now them Youropeans not profiting from the proceeds, they call it trafficking. They done suck we dry and abandon we arse to fight up on we own, so how them expect West-Indies-man to survive?’”

“As I told her once, we — Camahoans — have no language for atrocity: or if we do, we cannot bring ourselves to use it. We’d rather make ourselves forget.”

“Death is not a pretty thing, however much you dress it up.”

“It took something out of me, always, to confront this — the wasteful indifference of death.”

“Maybe loss needs something to attach itself to, I told her, something it can see or touch before it’s able to put whatever is lost to rest.”

Read it if you liked: any crime novels. This is the first installment of a four book series that I will undoubtably be continuing.