This was an interesting story that brought forward sadness, hope, and mystery. The characters were all interesting and fun to follow. The ending left you wanting more, but not too much more. Overall I enjoyed it. ( )

Truly a beautiful story of love, family, betrayal and friendship. I came across this book while looking for adult mermaid stories and this was recommended to me. Im only surprised I didn’t find it earlier!

So, where to begin? It’s the story of David Baptiste, a young fisherman who rescues a mermaid off the coast of Black Conch, a Caribbean island. She was about to be sold off by American tourists, and he brings her into hiding, and they fall in love in the process. There’s also a sideplot with a friend who helps him and befriends the mermaid, and is part of a second love story with her estranged husband and father of her son. That’s the very basics of this story.

This is told in 4 POVs, with David (in the form of journal entries), Arcadia (the main supporting character), the mermaid Aycayia (told in verse), and a few POV scenes with the American tourists.

This story was so compelling. The writing style is a bit different from what I was used to (in Caribbean-style English), but I didn’t have any trouble understanding it. It was always clear whose head we were in. Omniscient POV with all but Aycayia’s scenes. At the same time, it was heartbreaking, with the way the tourists treated Aycayia, and feeling her despair that she may never become a full woman again since she was cursed by her people centuries ago, because they were jealous of her beauty. I felt her initial mistrust toward the islanders, David in particular. And my heart warmed when she started warming to them.

And that ending tugged at my heartstrings! Not everyone gets a happy ending here, but it does give you hope that there might be one in the future.

Plus, this is quite short at about 240 pages for the e-book. Recommended if you like mermaid stories, don’t mind trying out a different writing style, and want to feel the feels. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2023/09/2023138-mermaid-of-black-conch-monique.ht... ( )

Magical story, beautifully written ( )

Okay, anyone who knows me as a reader knows this book isn't going to be my cup of tea. I really don't like magical realism no matter how many awards the book has won.

However, with the exception of two rainstorms (fish and like, jellyfish, raining down from the sky), Roffey manages to make this story of a mermaid believable. So it wasn't my skepticism that kept me from fully embracing this story.

In fact, chapter 2, entitled "Dauntless" was one incredible piece of writing. In it, Roffey really shows her strengths which I would characterize as terrific descriptions coupled with the ability to escalate tension. If I were teaching a writing class, I would use this chapter. If the whole book echoed this chapter, it would be certainly been five stars for me.

Unfortunately, these strengths seem to be offset by dialogue that just didn't work for me. The mermaid's dialogue was especially grating because it was in poetry form. Bad poetry. Maybe I'm not a person who really has the background to be a judge of poems, but I really did not find it lyrical, nor did it help create the character or add anything to the story. It's a out of the box structure that has no real purpose, and I was not a fan.

The plot and themes of the book were interesting enough, weaving in criminal behavior, love stories, and historical racism in a unique Caribbean setting.

I think fans of magical realism might really find the book worthwhile, but all in all, not my type of book, so hard for me to be too judgmental in either direction. ( )

In the 1970s, a group of white Americans on holiday on a Caribbean island go out fishing and catch more than they bargained for: a mermaid. Local fisherman David discovers what happens, takes pity on the mermaid and rescues her, only to find that the mermaid is actually a Taino woman, Aycayia, who was cursed long ago.

Monique Roffey's Mermaid of Black Conch is as much an exploration of the consequences of colonialism, ownership, and cruelty as it is a bittersweet romance between David and Aycayia. The is aided by the novel's vivid, sensual imagery which helps to make Black Conch feel like a real place inhabited by real if fantastical people: as a mermaid, Aycayia had a "barnacled, seaweed-clotted head", a tail of "yards and yards of musty silver"; "[s]he was crawling with sea-lice" and had spikes "like the spokes of a folded umbrella".

However, the prose is not always as precise as it could be, and Roffey often stopped short of really digging into the themes the book evoked. Moreover, as the book progressed and we got to know more of Aycayia's backstory and her own PoV, there were occasional hints of gender essentialism/heteronormativity that I found uncomfortable. (No, not all women are into dick.)

An engaging read, but a flawed one. ( )

I liked this more than I expected to going in. I mean... I like mermaids quite a bit, or the idea of them, but I'm never sure how much I'm going to love reading about that kind of magical realism. And they're such a freighted symbol at this point, so I'm always a bit wary of how they're going to be handled as a story element. But this one was good, and grew on me as it went—a bit dark, but not overly weighty with anything the mermaid stood for. She was herself, and a good character without being overly humanized. There's also nice friendship between her and a young deaf boy, very gentle and refreshing. It's a pretty straightforward tale of xenophobia and wonder, but good in the telling. ( )

In 1976, a group of American tourists capture a mermaid. David, a fisherman who has encountered the mermaid before, rescues her, and falls in love with her while she goes through a transformation back into a woman and learns to walk and talk again. But the curse she's under and the captors who are angry she slipped away from their clutches make sure it's not a fairytale ending to her or to David. ( )

Monique Roffey takes her readers back to the 1970s and a Caribbean island called Black Conch. The novel has aspects of myth, history and magical realism. The first thing for readers is to believe that a mermaid exists. David meets her while he is fishing in his boat. He plays his guitar and she seems to enjoy the music. But then two white Americans catch Aycayia, the mermaid and plan to take her home as a trophy.
There are tensions in this novel between races, between men and women, between animals and nature and humans and between the past and the future. There are thoughtless men, cruel women and corrupt police officers and the American white men don't see Aycayia as a person but as a fish and trophy. But there is also lots of love in this novel. Aycayia is heard through poems and songs, like something from the past. She changes the people who love her, including Reggie the son of the white woman on the hill as they become friends. The weather features too, the hurricane arrives near the end but before that the winds and sunshine and rain are part of the story. A fantastic read.. ( )

‘’That morning David played her soft hymns he’d learnt as a boy, praising God. He sang holy songs for her, songs which brought tears to his eyes, and there they stayed, on this second meeting, a small patch of sea apart, watching each other - a young, wet-eyed Black Conch fisherman with an old guitar, and a mermaid who’d arrived on the currents from Cuban waters, where once they talked of her by the name of Aycayia.’’

An ancient mermaid is captured by greedy white men. She was a woman, once, but she was cursed to become a creature of the sea because of her beauty. Cursed by women, threatened and abused by men. But a young fisherman, kind-hearted and wise, rescues her and she joins the mortal world once again. However, the ‘’modern’’ society is not modern at all, and there are forces that never change, no matter the centuries that separate the generations.

One of the most beautiful and moving stories you’ll ever read welcomes you with open arms.

‘’My lungs fill up with water
but I know the sea better than Yankee men
Woman put me in the sea
Call for huracan
Now man want to take me out
I feel fresh pain
next man pulling on the line
The hook in my throat
I want to go down to die.’’

Roffey sets her hypnotic, haunting story during the 70s, the era of changes. But ‘change’’ is a rather ambiguous word and ‘’change’’ often becomes the smoke-screen and excuse for profit at all costs. In her beautiful novel, Roffey pays homage to the traditions of the Caribbean, the myths of the relationship between mortal men and mermaids and comments on themes that are highly relevant to our troubled times. Race, sexuality, migration, violence, ruthless profit. How the white race takes and takes and takes. How women can be cruel and dangerous when jealousy and pure malice take over their souls. Instead of standing together, they become the worst threat. Men and women violate bodies and souls. This is the reality Aycayia has to face.

‘’The bald earth drank up all the rain. The tough white grass turned green. Mornings were cool and hazy. Mist clung to the tops of the mountains, where the temperature was cool. Large, matronly macajuel snakes, heavy with eggs, unfurled themselves and travelled slow slow through the dense rainforest, seeking the crystal water that gathered in pods in the crevises roots of trees.’’

Through the songs and hymns and the lullaby of the sea, through Aycayia’s laments (brilliantly presented as long fry-style poems/ folk songs), through the wild laughter of the women of the past and the deep pond between Aycayia and David and the kindness of Arcadia, Life and Reggie, inspired by Neruda’s The Mermaid and the Drunks, echoing Marquez’s works, Monique Roffey creates a story that we should cherish. A journey to a captivating natural environment, the depths of the human soul and the way we mercilessly destroy our world.

‘’I knew that ghosts came onto the land from the sea. You could feel them out there. I sat and wondered just what kinda men get murder here in this bay and for what reason? White men arrive from far away and then sail back to where they came from. I always figure is feelings of being insecure that make someone want to take from others. The white men who came here were full of jumbie spirit, always restless. Ghosts came into the bay, ghosts of white men, and red men and black men like me, and these ghosts came like a current bringing unease and nervousness. Is only my humble opinion. But this is what white men bring here to the Caribbean: trouble. Then and now, they always looking, then taking something.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ ( )

David Baptiste, a fisherman from the island of Black Conch, has heard the legends about mermen in the local waters all his life, but he has never heard of a mermaid. But one day back in the April of ‘76, David is sitting in his pirogue, strumming his guitar, and waiting for the fish to bite, when a merwoman appears from the depths. Not a mermaid from a Disney story, but a huge powerful merwoman from long ago, with hair alive with sea creatures. And she returns every day, until the day that the white Americans come to fish shark at Black Conch and instead catch themselves a mermaid ...

Unlike David, the Americans view the mermaid purely as a trophy to be sold to the highest bidder, and cannot see that she is a person in her own right. So David rescues her, and secretes her in his bathtub until he can release her back into the ocean. But once out of the sea the mermaid begins to change:

‘The nest of sargassum seaweed in her hair began to fall off in clumps and underneath was long, black and knotted dreads. Her ears dropped seawater and small sea insects climbed out. Her nostrils bled all kinds of molluscs and tiny crabs. She’d been a home to all kinda small sea creatures, and they were slowly, over days, abandoning her, moving out. Small piles appeared by the side of the tub and these piles were active. Crabs scuttled away, sideways. I had to shoo away the neighbour’s cat which came sniffing around.’

This is a beautifully written novel which evokes the atmosphere of the Caribbean wonderfully. It touches on love, jealousy and the legacy of colonialism and slavery. The winner of the Costa Book of the Year for 2020, I’m very surprised that it’s not better known on LT. ( )

The Fisherman and the Mermaid
Review of the Peepal Tree Press paperback edition (2020)

Monique Roffey presents a terrific fantasy fiction here which incorporates everything from a terrifying battle at sea through to the revelation of a miraculous 1,000 year old sea being who is the result of an ancient tribal curse. This is wrapped up with tales of love and friendship, some of which are fated to not end well and others which promise hope and forgiveness.

The mermaid Aycayia is from the island shaped like a crocodile (is that Cuba?) and has wandered the Caribbean Sea for centuries. She is beguiled by the songs of David, a fisherman and is drawn too close to the (fictitious) island of Black Conch. Caught by American sports-fishers, she is wounded and hung up like a trophy fish in the port of St. Constance until rescued and hidden by David when the drunk fishermen are carousing in a tavern. Aycayia's condition isn't permanent though and with longer time on land she begins to revert to human form and regains memories of her original tribal language and learns sign language and gradually English through David's friends, Miss Rain and her deaf son Reggie. The story is told in toggle format with a forward narrative from 1976 and flashbacks from David's journals in 2015-2016. Interspersed throughout are Aycayia's own thoughts which are delivered in a poetic song format.

This is a terrific feat of imagination and creation and is well due the accolades that it has been receiving in numerous literary award nominations. Writer Roffey is a new name to me, but apparently has several other novels which are also in the genre of magic-realism.

I read The Mermaid of Black Conch due to its nomination for The 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize for small independent publishers, for which it was recently shortlisted on March 25, 2021. I also support the Republic of Consciousness Prize through its Book of the Month club.

Trivia and Link
My lede is inspired by the similar topic and theme of Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa's short story The Professor and the Siren (1961/2014) where the mermaid is from Greek mythology and the setting is the island of Sicily. ( )

Loved the voices, some irresistible, others given a shudder, but all ringing true. And the story which is told so straight forward and entrancing to read. ( )

3.5 ( )