BEWARE OF SPOILERS. I DON'T HIDE OR PROMOTE MY REVIEWS.Evocative but baffling. The hypnotic writing kept me going.The main character is Roselie, a handsome, French-speaking black woman painter born on the Caribbean island of Gaudeloupe. She's aloof. She loves to paint, but has never made it big on the art scene. She often thinks of herself as a misfit.Most of the book takes place in Cape Town, South Africa, where she has met and married a white Briton. (Or did she marry him? Sometimes the book says he proposed, but she never said yes.)Either way they stay together for decades, until the husband is unexpectedly stabbed to death while walking alone on a neighborhood street after midnight. Only then does Roselie learn the husband had a deviant side that he hid well.An on-again, off-again motif runs throughout the story.Either Roselie was badly molested as a child by numerous relatives. Or she wasn't. Either she is pregnant by a post-husband lover at the book's end. Or she isn't.Either Roselie is a great and tortured artist, though unacclaimed. Or she's just tortured. Or neither.To cap it off, I couldn't decide by the end of the story whether Roselie is put upon unjustly by other people, or encourages her own fate by being so detached and self-centered.The cannibal of the title is a notorious woman who's in the news for murdering her husband. But perhaps Roselie is another cannibal woman?She did not consume her husband. In some ways, he left behind a scandal that may devour her. But Roselie has a languid way of picking people apart, down to their crudest motivations. (Except when she is totally clueless about people, which also occurs.)I confess I can't understand the heavy ambivalence that runs throughout the book. But that didn't stop me from reading it.Note: The jacket on my book copy had a blurb describing this as a thriller. It's hard for me to view a story with such a deliberately unhurried pace as a "thriller."As an aside -- I happen to have lately read three novels set in modern Africa, by different authors. Yet, all convey to me that urban Africa is fetid, filled with anxiety and entirely unappealing. Besides this book, I also read "Eclipse" by Richard North Patterson and "Fugitive" by Phillip Margolin.What gives? Is it just the combo of poverty, disease, corruption and racial conflict that is the backdrop for each? Or ...?
You know, I just can't get into books like this. Thanks to my good friend and writer, Christine Amsden, I've learned that there are two main categories of writing: literary and genre. This book definitely falls into a literary category, and I've come to accept that this style of writing just annoys me. I can respect fancy-smanchy prose. I'm all about expanding one's vocabulary. But to do so at the cost of telling a good story is just book-murder to me. I am in total belief that the craft of writing needs take a close yet firm backseat to the story the author writes. Without a good story and solid characters, all the poetry in the world couldn't save a sinking novel. And this one definitely sunk for me.
Do You like book The Story Of The Cannibal Woman (2007)?
I face a conundrum with this book. Its written by one of my favorite authors in a setting that I love and frequent, Capetown, South Africa. I should love this book, its intelligent, smart, full of pithy observations and acerbic wit. But the main characters, a couple consisting of a French speaking Black Antillean and a White Englishman are two of the most unlikable protagonists I've come across in a long time. The two outsiders pull no punches in their criticisms of S.A. society and others as well. African-Americans, African Franco phones, Afrikaaners, and coloureds, all are dissected and found lacking. But quite a bit rings true. Only Rosalie and Stephen seem above it all. But wait..of course there is a deep dark secret that the noble Englishman carries unbeknownst to Rosalie. Rosalie, so easily led and blind to whats obvious around her. I guessed the denouement long before it occurred...so what should have been a favorite book was sabotaged by disagreeable characters and a rather flat and mundane ending.
—William
No, it is a metaphor. This woman's husband goes out to buy cigarettes and never comes back. He is murdered. It goes into the search for answers, but that is where she lost me.
—Robin
Conde is excellent at unraveling the labyrinthine complexity of race and its multifarious public and private consequences. Interesting portrayal of a 50 year old woman, native of Guadaloupe, now resident of the Cape in South Africa and recently "widowed" after her partner of some 20 years is murdered during a midnight foray ostensibly to buy a pack of cigarettes. Of course, all is never as it seems. That is, people are never what they seem. And the journey to discover one's self is lifelong. The novel falters, I think, at the end, with the revelation of a betrayal that as a plot device borders, in my opinion, on the cheap and overused. Perhaps true to life, but disappointing in a novel that in many other ways is fresh and exciting.
—Paula
