Bahni Turpin is an experienced narrator of international fiction, and it shows in this story about an American woman abroad. Shay is an African-American woman whose relationship with her holiday house in Madagascar becomes as important as the ones she has with real people. Turpin gives a lively, arch performance, capturing the history and magic of Madagascar as well as Shay's personality. Listeners who are searching for a unique novel that intertwines plot with setting will soak in this experience. Turpin jumps back and forth between details of the island's vivid past and Shay's urgent present, filled with the demands of work, parenting, and marriage. This entertaining title will engage listeners until the very end. M.R. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Red Island House: A Novel
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
Andrea LeeUnabridged — 11 hours, 59 minutes
Red Island House: A Novel
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
Andrea LeeUnabridged — 11 hours, 59 minutes
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Overview
“People do mysterious things when they think they have found paradise,” reflects Shay, the heroine of Red Island House. When Shay, an intrepid Black American professor, marries Senna, a brash Italian businessman, she doesn't imagine that her life's greatest adventure will carry her far beyond their home in Milan: to an idyllic stretch of beach in Madagascar where Senna builds a flamboyant vacation villa. Before she knows it, she becomes the reluctant mistress of a sprawling household, caught between her privileged American upbringing and her connection to the continent of her ancestors. So begins Shay's journey into the heart of a remote African country. Can she keep her identity and her marriage intact amid the wild beauty and the lingering colonial sins of this mysterious world that both captivates and destroys foreigners?
A mesmerizing, powerful tale of travel and self-discovery that evokes Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, Red Island House showcases an extraordinary literary voice and gorgeously depicts a lush and unknown world.
Editorial Reviews
01/04/2021
Lee’s seductive novel (her first in 15 years, after Lost Hearts in Italy) chronicles the life of Shay Gilliam, a Black American woman married to an Italian man. Her husband, Senna, builds the couple a vacation property and pension in northwestern Madagascar. It takes a while for Shay to adjust during visits from Italy, where Shay teaches literature, but she befriends head housekeeper Bertine, whom Shay enlists to help her get rid of loud, racist Kristos, the house manager. As the decades pass, the couple raises children and continues to visit. Meanwhile, various episodes in Madagascar occupy Shay, including a feud between a volatile bar owner and an ostentatious business rival who appears to be “living out some Happy Valley colonial fantasy.” (One of the two ends up dead.) Shay also has an unsettling encounter while searching for a “sacred tree,” and develops a “strange intimacy” with the skipper of the couple’s decrepit catamaran. These experiences lead Shay to confront ideas about race, class, and colonialism. If the plotting is episodic, the writing is vivid: “the first caress of tropical air” is “like an infant’s hand on the face,” and Shay’s fond reflections on Bertine are especially moving. Things ebb and flow, but the overall impact is quietly powerful. (Mar.)
"This transporting history of an imperfect marriage braids together dramatic episodes, island history and fable, all infused with Lee’s sharp insights into human nature."
—People Magazine
"Come for the views, stay for simmering tensions and culture clashes. Lee welcomes readers with lush language, then lays out a dazzling buffet of choices and assumptions that are ripe for questioning."
—The New York Times
"A gorgeous narrative that perhaps only Lee could have constructed — an ambitious attempt to use fiction to explore the reality of a world fractured by race and class."
—The Washington Post
"Spellbinding! I’m in utter awe of Red Island House. . . . Lee’s exquisitely precise language brings the reader deep into the Malagasy world, both geographically and emotionally, and I never wanted to leave. This book is a marvel."
—Elin Hilderbrand
"Lush, perceptive... a unique, surprising work – at once a psychological novel, a novel of place and a novel about relationships."
—Mark Athitakis, USA Today
"Lee combines luscious physical descriptions with sharp-witted social perception in this thrilling novel... she approaches the broadly political and the minutely intimate with equally fine prose."
—Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Lee’s striking writing is layered and thick with evocative descriptions of people, landscapes, feelings and foreboding. Sociological and psychological, it’s prose with the abstract feel of poetry. The stories of Red Island House are vibrant and enchanting."
—BookPage, starred review
"Offers a captivating take on colonialism, privilege, race, and heritage."
—Christian Science Monitor
“Journey to the island of Madagascar through the eyes of a Black American woman in an epic tale that explores the dangers of love against the backdrop of paradise."
—San Francisco Book Review
"Andrea Lee whisks you to the island of Madagascar and spins interconnected stories set on the beach."
—Martha Stewart Living
"Lee writes with such lush and observant precision that you feel you are traveling with her."
—The Millions
"Spellbinding! I’m in utter awe of Red Island House... Lee’s exquisitely precise language brings the reader deep into the Malagasy world, both geographically and emotionally, and I never wanted to leave. This book is a marvel." —Elin Hildebrand
"Brilliant and tragic."
—Booklist, starred review
"A mesmerizing novel... The lush natural habitat and privileged ex-pat existence contrast starkly with the island’s poverty and traditions, and Lee makes magic of this to deliver a singularly intriguing and mysterious saga that casts an enduring spell."
—O Magazine, Most Anticipated Books of 2021
"Gorgeous writing, fascinating stories, and a vibrant cast of locals and expats dance around this basic theme ... An utterly captivating, richly detailed, and highly critical vision of how the one percent lives in neocolonial paradise."
—Kirkus, starred review
"Seductive... the writing is vivid... the overall impact is quietly powerful."
—Publishers Weekly
"Lee is known for the evocative settings of her...books...I’m excited to travel to Madagascar with her new novel."
—The Every Girl
"The star is Madagascar... whose terrain is so gorgeously described by Lee that any reader with an ounce of adventurousness would move to the island tomorrow. But beauty can never hide tension for long, and Lee deftly handles race and class in ways that resonate even for those who could not find Madagascar with a GPS."
—Air Mail
"Red Island House is one of the best novels of the year. A beautifully constructed manifesto on the Black expatriate view of the world, Andrea Lee explores mixed race heritage and inheritance in such an electric, interesting way.”
—Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie
“Andrea Lee's new novel—about a Black American woman caught between her privilege and her identity—is daring, riveting and deep. The lavish vacation home she and her husband build on an impoverished African island is a collision course, and like this novel, will make you question everything you thought you understood—about allegiance and race, politics and desire.”
—Danzy Senna, author of New People
"Andrea Lee's latest novel is a work of supreme knowingness, and keen observation. As one of the more articulate voices we have on the exigencies of race, place, and gender, Lee has rendered, in this superbly constructed and felt book, that rare thing: a work of the imagination as shattering as the truth."
—Hilton Als, author of The Women and White Girls
“‘In Madagascar, everything speaks’ . . . if you can hear it. And hear it all does Andrea Lee’s exquisitely sentient protagonist. At first dimly, but then with an ever more discerning ear, Shay attunes herself and the reader to subtlety after subtlety, until the island has yielded extraordinary truths, not only about itself, its people, and its visitors, but about the undertow of plunder. This is a ravishing book ofuncommon depth; I loved it.”
—Gish Jen, author of The Resisters
“Lee’s Red Island House is a seductive, haunted dreamscape where ancestors stir trouble across four centuries and three continents. From the moment Shay Senna arrives at this seaside Madagascar paradise, she senses danger. Betrayal comes but so does reconciliation and a healing sisterhood, as Lee lures us into a realm where boundaries between the real and the surreal disappear.”
—A’Lelia Bundles, author of Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker
"This magical novel—a collection of reflections and vignettes—is as lush, dense and vivid as the Madagascar it describes. Pairing rich detail with reflective restraint, Lee has created something truly beautiful: At once an exploration of an enchanted island and a meditation on modern womanhood."
—Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go
"At once charming and deeply serious, this eloquent, elegant, beautifully written novel takes on the full range of human experience: love and disappointment, hope and betrayal, race, class, colonialism, moral obligation, the high cost of being an outsider—and the equally high price of belonging."
—Francine Prose, author of Mister Monkey
"I know of no other writer who creates the kinds of worlds Andrea Lee imagines—the exquisite prose, the otherworldly landscapes, the fascinating people. Red Island House transported me. It may have looked like I was sitting on my couch reading a book, but I’m telling you I traveled to Madagascar.”
—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Wench and Balm
08/01/2021
While it is classified as a novel, the latest offering from Lee (Russian Journal) is more like a series of related, beautifully written vignettes centering on life and culture in Madagascar. Each vignette includes Shay, a Black literature professor who vacations in Madagascar with her husband Senna, a wealthy Italian executive who has built his dream house in the tropical island paradise. Senna revels in his role as lord of the manor, employing and using the Malagasy locals as it suits him. Shay, however, develops feelings of kinship with the Malagasy; over the years, she becomes more and more uncomfortable with what she sees as their exploitation at the hands of wealthy Europeans. She even comes to believe that she may be on the wrong side of Madagascar's struggles with racism, classism, and colonialism—the very issues she explores as a scholar of African American literature. Bahni Turpin masterfully portrays Lee's international cast of characters, and her versatile narration pulls together the many threads of the interconnected short stories. Her warm delivery and slow pacing also allow listeners to savor Lee's lovely prose and contemplate the novel's important issues. VERDICT Listeners expecting a traditional novel may not have the patience for Lee's nonlinear narrative, but those who do will long remember the characters that Lee and Turpin have brought to life.—Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib.
10/01/2020
When her Italian husband builds her a grand house in Madagascar, African American professor Shay finds herself raising her children in paradise while acknowledging the tension between her entitled American upbringing and her African heritage. Author of the National Book Award-nominated memoir Russian Journal, former New Yorker staffer Lee returns with her first novel in 15 years. With a 100,000-copy first printing.
Bahni Turpin is an experienced narrator of international fiction, and it shows in this story about an American woman abroad. Shay is an African-American woman whose relationship with her holiday house in Madagascar becomes as important as the ones she has with real people. Turpin gives a lively, arch performance, capturing the history and magic of Madagascar as well as Shay's personality. Listeners who are searching for a unique novel that intertwines plot with setting will soak in this experience. Turpin jumps back and forth between details of the island's vivid past and Shay's urgent present, filled with the demands of work, parenting, and marriage. This entertaining title will engage listeners until the very end. M.R. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
★ 2020-12-25
When she weds an Italian tycoon, an African American intellectual becomes the unwilling mistress of an estate in Madagascar.
They meet at a wedding in Como, Italy, a case of opposites attract. "To Shay, fresh out of graduate school, Senna is a new experience: this cheeky, charismatic Italian a decade and a half older than she is, a businessman...who...has bought part of an actual island." During their courtship, Senna builds the Red House, a tropical mansion whose architectural influences range from Indonesia to Antigua to Disney World, staffing it with an army of locals and a Greek house manager, to provide a setting for an annual holiday throughout their married life. In a series of tales set over two decades, Shay has a love-hate relationship with the estate and her role there; she is "expected to pass her holiday months not as a sojourner comfortably decompressing from a busy Milan life of teaching and translating and chivying her college-bound kids, but as a vigilant matriarch who exerts iron control—even if it is part-time—over the work ethic, health, and morality of her numerous Malagasy household staff." Gorgeous writing, fascinating stories, and a vibrant cast of locals and expats dance around this basic theme. One of Shay's early allies is Bertine La Grande, the head housekeeper, who helps her use witchcraft to undo the wrongs wrought by her husband and the evil manager. Another thread depicts the rivalry between two powerful women, one a restaurateur and the other a bar owner. Against a background of myth and magic, as well as racism, sex tourism, and exploitation, the never-perfect match between Senna and Shay continues to devolve.
An utterly captivating, richly detailed, and highly critical vision of how the one percent lives in neocolonial paradise.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172794636 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 03/23/2021 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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