“Tell him – across the expanse of time and distance, as I am telling you now – all that I can’t say to him. Start with the resentment and the feelings of neglect and your resulting recklessness. Recount every injury, every scar you carve into each other. And when you’re finished, and you are certain your father has heard, do what might divert you from the path to self-destruction: forgive yourselves.”
The Booker Prize longlist was released on 8/1, so of course I’m already devouring the ones I can get my hands on. (I may end up having to purchase some from the UK.) I started with Jonathan Escoffery’s debut If I Survive You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2022). If I Survive You is a series of interconnected stories centering on Trelawny and spidering out to his family. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, in particular the cadence that hummed through each story and the reoccurring themes of fathers and sons. There is also a special place in my heart for that “nervous condition” of those who flee (or leave) their homeland and seek to establish roots in another, so even though Trelawny is infuriating at times, I enjoyed him as the center.
Trelawny’s parents fled Jamica to escape the political violence in Kingston and to give their two young boys a shot at a different life. In Florida, young Trelawny struggles with his identity. He’s mixed race and doesn’t consider himself Black. He’s also too dark to be white. He hangs with the Hispanics for a bit until they learn he doesn’t speak Spanish and that he has Black blood. When he graduates, he runs from that melting pot of varying shades of brown and cultures that is Florida to the Midwest. He gets a degree in literature and returns to the only home and family he has left in the States, his dad and older brother, Delano – two folks with whom his relationship is tenuous at best. He takes increasingly odd jobs to support himself, his literature degree relatively worthless.
Scattered through out Trelawny’s adventures are his father’s story of leaving Jamica and finding financial success in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, Delano’s attempts to get quick money to fight for custody of his kids and business-related troubles that flow from his desperate attempts, and his cousin, Cukie’s, dangerous relationship with his father. Each story showcases the nervousness of a person who is floating rootless seeking home, family, and comfort. And often, forgiveness or to forgive.
If I Survive You (and Trelawny) grabs fast and doesn’t let go – it’s a captivating collection of that nervous condition born of being rootless.
Read this book.
Booker Count: 1 of 13 **One of the 2023 judges is a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve decided to keep track of the novels that name drop Willy Shakespeare. This is one.
A Girl Named Tommi 