Island Beneath The Sea

Isabel Allende

HarperCollins

Otago Daily Times, May 29th 2010

Isabel Allende’s reputation as a magic realist and one of Latin America’s finest historical novelists is well deserved.  In Island Beneath the Sea she turns her attention from the political struggles of her native country to revolutionary Haiti, and in so doing loses the sense of character and place that make novels such as Daughter of Fortune and Portrait in Sepia so extraordinary. 

The central character of the novel is a muletta slave called Zarite, whose Guinean mother (raped by a white sailer on the slave ship bound for Haiti) attempted to kill her at birth.  Rescued and trained to serve, Zarite’s early attempts to escape are easily defeated, and at nine years old she is sold to a French plantation owner, Tolouse Valmorain.  Inevitably she becomes not only his head house-slave but his (unwilling) concubine, bearing him two children of her own as well as becoming the de-facto mother of his legitimate son, Maurice.

Bound by these ties, she helps her master escape the 1973 uprising that saw slaves slaughter and burn their way through the plantations of French Haiti, accompanying him first to Cuba and then to the Spanish colony of Louisiana.  The price of her assistance is freedom for herself and her daughter Rosette (her son having been taken from her at birth), and eventually she finds love and some measure of happiness in her new home of New Orleans.

The story alternates between a third-person description of people and events and the first-person reminiscences of the older Zarite, passages frequently closing with phrases such as ‘This is what was told’, or ‘This is how I remember it.’ This technique serves to contrast the subjective nature of her experience with the ‘factual’ presentation of the omniscient narrator, and unfortunately this is exactly where my problem with this novel lies; story is subsumed to realism for its own sake. 

Zarite informs us of the cultural and religious aspects of Haitian life, while a variety of real characters (Toussaint, Galbaud, Dessalines) appear in the general chapters and then disappear again, leaving the reader confused as to who is fighting for whom and why.  Once the action moves to America, there are occasional ‘updates’ of the ongoing struggle for Haitian independence, but these seem to be there only to prove the historical authenticity of the novel. 

In contrast, New Orleans is almost as mythical as the titular Island under the Sea, where Guinean homeland the slaves believe awaits them after death.  Although it is made clear that racism persists (free women of colour are forbidden by law to wear jewellery), slaves in Louisiana are apparently incalculably better off than in Haiti.  With the exception of brief jail scenes when Rosette is arrested for slapping a white woman, there is no sign of the harsh life many Negroes undoubtedly lived.

Zarite speaks of anger, resentment, and the injustice of being forced into a life where freedom can only be found in the music, drums, and voodoo ceremony of her homeland, but Allende’s voice lacks the authenticity of writers such as Toni Morrison or Meya Angelou. As for Valmorain, he arrives in Haiti full of Enlightenment ideals, but slips easily into the role of slave master (albeit less brutal than some), a transition that Allende seems to ascribe as much to the climate as any aspect of his nature. 

Most of the other characters are similarly two-dimensional, and I’m afraid that for me this novel fails to live up to the hype it will inevitably generate.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/sense-character-place-lost-authors-change-focus