Suite as Sugar - Camille Hernández-Ramdwar - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Camille Hernández-Ramdwar

GENRE: Anthology

RATING: 2.6 stars.

In a Nutshell: Loved the introductory note and the reason behind this anthology. Couldn’t figure out the point of most of the stories. Disappointed.

The introductory note mentions that this short story collection is written in honour of the ancestors who persevered despite the odds, and for those who continue to suffer injustices today. The idea is to read it in order to reconnect with the earth, with nature, with spirit. The stories are described as Havana Noir and are located in varied places in Canada and The Caribbean.

Great intro and intent! If only the implementation created the same feelings in me. Most of the stories in this debut collection left me feeling zilch. The endings weren’t satisfactory – they were either abrupt or weird. The plot development was quite haphazard, sometimes with no logical correlation between the start and the end. They weren’t even slice-of-life in style, which could have explained away a few of the issues.

Moreover, the blurb promised stories “permeated with the violence of colonial histories, personal and intimate, in settings where the veil between the living and the dead is obscured.” This led to very different expectations. The colonial history part of the claim is visible only in bits and pieces.

I couldn’t connect to most of the characters in the stories. It was almost as if we were viewing them from a frosted glass pane, so they were visible more as blurred shapes than as well-etched figures.

One more thing that affected my enjoyment was the use of dialectical English in almost every story. While I understand why dialectical English works better in creating an authentic reader experience, reading it all through the story (especially with the Caribbean spellings and slang) is a major pain in the posterior. Audiobooks can handle dialects better, but during actual reading, a lot of time can be wasted figuring out the actual word from the spelling variant used. In fact, one of the stories (‘How to Build a Saddis’) comes from a child’s pov, and hence, the entire story is written in childish spellings (or rather misspellings.) This story is an amazing writing feat, because it surely takes a creative writer to put across every word in the tale from a child’s mind-set. But reading it? Oh my! I didn’t understand half of what the child was saying.

Basically, I loved the intent behind this collection but couldn’t bring myself to enjoy the content.

As always, I rated the stories individually, and except for one story (‘Mr. Bull's Garden’) that touched the 4 star mark for its writing style and plot, the rest generated no memorable emotions.

The author has writing talent, no doubt about it, but this just wasn’t my kind of writing. Coming from a country with a history of colonisation, I was hoping for an impactful experience with this collection. Sadly, it was not to be. Maybe fans of more abstract or surrealist works will enjoy this collection better.

2.6 stars, based on the average of my ratings for the individual stories.

My thanks to Dundurn Press and NetGalley for the DRC of “Suite as Sugar”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.