Book Review: The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey

The rains came hard in May that year – early, for the rainy season. Every time the rain came down, it sounded like thousands of gloved hands clapping. The daily downpour was a mixed blessing. With the rain, every man and woman felt an old, lingering, hard-to-dissolve guilt for past sins. The rain brought awkward memories and nourishment, together.

The Mermaid of Black Conch

David, a fisherman, waits for the early morning catch off the island of Black Conch: he sings and plays his guitar while he waits. Unbeknownst to him, his voice attracts a mermaid to the surface of the water. When he sees her feels his stomach tremble “with desire and fear and wonder because he knew what he’d seen.” Aycayia returns again another day when she hears his boat.

One day, she hears him as he follows a bigger boat carrying an American father and son out to sea to go fishing. The son’s hook gets caught in Aycayia’s throat and after a long struggle, they pull her up to the surface and drag her onto the boat. They view her as their catch and their property, and they decide that they will sell her back in America for a huge sum of money.

David, when he hears of her capture, runs to the dock where he finds her hanging upside down alongside the fish caught that day. He plans to put her back in the sea but, when he sees how hurt she is, he takes her to his home. In his bathtub her tail falls off and, after a few days, her legs come back. He watches as the sea seems to pour out from her. All the time, they watch each other and grow closer.

As the book continues we learn that she was a beautiful young woman from centuries ago who was cursed by jealous women in her village and banished her to a life of solitude in the sea. As she learns more about life on a land that is so different to where she lived in before, she begins to wonder if she may be free of the curse at last. She begins to form bonds with David and with Miss Rain and her son, Reggie, who live up on the hill in the old plantation mansion. The book explores the painful history of slavery in the Caribbean and the ramifications of it that were passed on down through the generations of those still living there.

White families still owned land like they used to and black men like him came and went, looking for the promised freedom of independent living. Besides, coming and going was the way of all these islands. Come and go. Mix up, move on. Leave seeds behind in the form of children; his grandfather, Darcus Baptiste had produced fifty-two.

The Mermaid of Black Conch

I loved this book, it dragged me in from the first page and I could not stop thinking about it. It is so rich with the Caribbean voice and the characters are so mournful and compelling: I was completely engrossed. It beautifully and painfully explores how women treat each other, and the relationship between people and nature: how some think they can own it and how powerful nature actually is.

Black Conch was a helluva place, Miss Rain often said, and the northern tip of the island was a special type of hell. Her earliest memory was of a low, incessant growl through the night, like thunder and bestial hunger mixed together, a growl that said I’m coming to shred you, but it was only the howler monkeys in the rainforest behind the house.

The Mermaid of Black Conch

This is not a fairy-tale. It is bloody and visceral, gruesome in parts and sublime in others. It is a stunning book that will get into your veins.