A Caribbean-African Love Story

So I finished Elizabeth Nunez’s Discretion this morning.

The writing is so clear, so supple that one feels for the

protagonist, one feels the suffering he endures for being

separated from his lover. Of course, there’s a twist,

he’s a big-time ambassador with a wife.

An African, he battles with his European, Christian

upbringing that teaches him that one should only

have one wife, but he yearns to have them both

since he does not wish to be without either.

The difference though is that while he can exist

without his wife, his time is torturous without

his lover Marguerite, a Jamaican-born artist

who lives in New York.

Although he stays with his wife, more out of the

need for image and loyalty to her father (the President),

he is not happy with her, no longer sleeps in her bed

and even goes away to his cottage to be alone

quite often. His wife describes him as a zombie,

he can't concentrate, he can't think of anything but

Marguerite, he can’t sleep and when he does he

wakes up sweating from dreams of Marguerite,

and he faces painful waking hours.

Marguerite is equally tortured since on two occasions

she ended the relationship, as she could not deal with

her guilt. Her philosophy is that women will only start

having power when they stop sleeping with other women’s men.

While there are other characters in the novel, they act as

true supporting actors, providing the right setting for this

story.

According to Caryl Phillips, author of Cambridge and

Crossing River, “it’s so rare to read anything that

deals with the Caribbean, Africa, and the United

States in such a seamless way”. I can’t quantify

whether it is indeed rare since I haven’t read

enough novels to consider myself an authority

on the matter, but indeed, as characters dip in

and out of America, Africa or Jamaica, one doesn’t

feel jerked from one scene to the other. They are seamless.

Most, if not all, of Nunez’s books deal with Trinidad and Tobago.

Obviously, although she’s spent many years in the States,

Nunez’s homeland is always on her mind. And even though

Discretion is not based in T&T, she finds a way to mention

it in an expose on the West Indian experience in Brooklyn,

she finds a way to mention the Mighty Sparrow.

The critics were right; Discretion is “a provocative love story”,

“a real page turner” and “a mystical tale about love, passion,

and the choices we make in life”.

For more info on Nunez, check out www.elizabethnunez.com