V: Definitely, definitely. Ah, once again, I have to thank you for introducing me to another author and book that I probably never would have come across on my own. As a feminist, activist, and writer I’m just in awe as I learn more about Roffey as a person. And I’m so interested in reading her other books, including Archipelago, which she describes as an eco-novel. I’m going leave our listeners, some of whom may be writers as well, with something Roffey said that really resonated with me: So, what about you? How did you hear about the book, and what made you want to read it and recommend it for the podcast? I am bilingual and can speak this other type of English when I want to. It’s in my ear and it is the language I grew up with all around me. Trinidadians love speaking their own English; it’s full of poetic forms and can be playful and lyrical and comical. Trinidadians are verbal acrobats, and I love being on the island just to hear the people speak …

And then when Aycayia reflects on the moments when she realized she was falling in love with David: Miss Rain nodded. “Sometimes, we women not fair even in our own thoughts about ourselves. You men born from us, and yet you assume power. Is we who give you that power. You see that man, Life? That man make me wait, make me patient.” Race also plays a role in the story. Most of the characters in the book are conscious of The Caribbean’s history of colonisers. At one point David Baptiste regrets that his surname is a French one. The only major white character, Arcadia Rain (the Americans only make brief appearances in the beginning and end) is more like her Caribbean neighbors as she speaks the dialect. Coming from an island that has been under many different occupations, I was able to relate to this aspect of the book. For me, life is made up of numerous influential voices and ideas: Buddhist dharma; the Caribbean lexicon; the tarot; text-speak; the secular world of London; the East End and its mosques and multiple immigrant histories, a part of London with its own vernacular… My life feels utterly fluid and diverse and yet works as a whole. So, everyday life shows me a non-linear form and that it’s utterly viable to compile a novel in the same way, to reflect this … For all the issues, this never becomes a book which forgets its story or characters - there is a unique love story here, and one which is inflected through myth and legend - which are themselves fragments of previous cultures washing through time.David was strumming his guitar and singing to himself when she first raised her barnacled, seaweed-clotted head from the flat, grey sea, its stark hues of turquoise not yet stirred. Plain so, the mermaid popped up and watched him for some time before he glanced around and caught sight of her. And inexplicably overlooked for the Booker Prize and Women's Prize, which says rather more about those prizes than the book. Freedom is another theme. Acyayia’s transformation frees her of the curse. Arcadia is free from her connections with white people when her house, built by slaves, is destroyed. Arcadia’s deaf and dumb son, Reggie cannot really experience the nastier elements of the world so he free from evil. David, by documenting his side of the story is finally letting his emotions escape so partly this book is a form of release.

I mean, it’s such a complex response to such a complex issue, right? For me this book was just amazing, this complex love story being shared about these two couples whose lives are intertwined. But that these relationships are both impacted by forces outside of their immediate impact and control, primarily the curse of those women centuries ago and the lingering impact of colonization, amongst other things. Ah, I love this idea of verbal acrobatics as kind of like this superpower. I mean, colonizers often didn’t learn the language of the people they colonized; but in being forced to learn the language of their colonizers, the colonized learned to wield it like a weapon, I would say. Every sentence in Monique Roffey’s extraordinary book is alive with fluming, amphibious intelligence and alert to the blessing, and the curse, of love in a life of flux. A new sea hymnal to challenge, and change, the old dark songs that humans know by heart.” —Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Orange World and Other Stories A beautifully, subtly written tale of an ancient woman, Aycayia, cursed to be a mermaid, captured in a fishing competition by white USA men then rescued by David Baptiste, a local fisherman who falls in love with her. In a stunning fusion of story and voice, this is told in a lyrical manner which uses Caribbean cadences and rhythm alongside Aycayia's free verse narrative, foregrounding language as one of the contested issues here: the 'standard' harsh American of the men from Florida contrasted with variations of accent and communications from sign language to singing. I listened to the audiobook and benefited from the authentic reading - I don't think this is a book which should be read in 'received pronunciation' English!I have to mention that this mermaid had been a young performer who was cursed with a mermaid tail by jealous women of her community because they feared their husbands wouldn't be able to resist their desires for her. Put a pin in that. David upon hearing about the capture of the Mermaid heads to the jetty, cuts her down and takes her home. He doesn’t have a plan, but he knows he cannot let the Mermaid come to ruin, he also knows doing this may lead to his ruin, but he takes the chance. Sentence by sensuous sentence, Roffey builds a verdant, complicated world that is a pleasure to live inside…. You might start to believe in the existence of mermaids.”— The New York Times And so what did we think of this unusual novel that weaves together sex, misogny and race with love, music, magic and myth, plus it throws in a few spliffs, a virginal mermaid, a crooked cop, and a chorus of vindictive women. All that in one book? Yes, indeed. Did it make for a good book club book? Was Kate able to cope with reading all the sex? If you buy a book about a mermaid is it then ok to complain it’s unrealistic? Listen in to find out.

At one stage Aycayia reflects on her time as a mermaid – “The sea was deeper than she knew or could swim … Her time had been spent mostly in the upper sea”: and I found that a good metaphor for the reading experience in this bookThis book doesn’t ‘seem’ like anything that I would have normally chosen by myself. In fact I’m sure of it. A joy to read, brimming with memorable characters and vivid descriptions. . . . For me, this was a hugely entertaining and thought-provoking novel.” —Rebecca Jones, BBC News but there are still a few people round St Constance who remember him as a young man and his part in the events in 1976, when those white men from Florida came to fish for marlin and instead pulled a mermaid out of the sea As a relationship of fascination develops between David and Aycayia, it becomes Aycyia’s undoing and she is caught and at the mercy of sinister men. When the men are distracted, David saves Aycayia and hides her. T: Interesting about Potiki, because in an article for The Guardian, Patricia Grace noted that in the criticisms she received on Potiki at the time, and I’ll just read a bit of it: