User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Madagascar is an island country in the Indian Ocean just east of Africa. It’s the fourth largest island in the world. It’s a biodiversity hot spot; over 90% of it’s wildlife
it’s found nowhere else on earth.
The culture, people,
(Malagasy people), and place sounds so vibrant.
The stories-vignettes-in “Red Island House”, by Andrea Lee
were dazzling...and ‘interesting’.....
...the psychological relationships were punctilious...
...the imperfect characters were captivating....
... the political and sociological aspects between the ‘privileged’ and ‘not’ felt realistically daunting.
...the prose was elegant...
....the lush exquisite beach of stretched-out sand, imagining birds of paradise jungles of animals, the history of the pirates, little children playing, rum drinks, snorkeling, the salt water smells, and sunshine...
Ha...’yep’ I’m ready for our two week 43rd anniversary vacation in Kauai this December!
After this pandemic... anywhere but home sounds like a welcome change!
But back to our story....
The beauty was overwhelmingly lovely to me...(loved it and felt it)...
not just the architecture of the land.... (poverty… vs. the wealthy which punches our souls)..
> a vital contrast fitting with the totality of the storytelling....
but the intimate mystery, romance, arguing, infidelity, a special friendship, and the very complicated look at our human differences.
We meet Shay, an African American professor. She falls in love and marries an older wealthy Italian named Senna. They met each other at a wedding in Italy. Both have been married before.
They live in Milan and take take summer oceanside vacations — bringing their two children — to the villa that Senna built on the island of Madagascar.... a small island of Naratrany.
Shay becomes the mistress of the Red House - an uncomfortable role. She’s black - the natives are black.
Her housekeeper is black: Bertine (a favorite character), whom she and Shay developed a special friendship with, is a pure delight to get to know.
...The storytelling is from Shay’s perspective — an interesting independent woman -but allows ( understandably to me, but hurtful too), her often schmuck of a husband to rule-like-king.
...the structure of Lee’s blending stories are unique ...
dealing with some heavy themes —racism, colonialism, and exploitation... as well personal marital complicated relationship themes. ....
But
.....it’s so beautifully written and engaging...
I LOVED IT!! 🦜🍂🏝
A slim-gem read. 🐚
Rating: really liked it
Beautifully written. It seems less of a novel and more of a collection of short stories (all with the same central character) that explore race, class, othering, death, betrayal and a million other topics. It was a slower sort of read and I needed my dictionary more than I'd like to admit but it was worth it.
Rating: really liked it
This mesmerizing book opens as Shay Gilliam, a Black American intellectual married to Senna a tycoon Italian businessman, and unwilling mistress of the Red House, a sprawling big house and household in Madagascar, is following her Malagasy housekeeper to a conjurer to lift an evil spell on her house.
This quietly powerful book, told through a series of incisive and vividly written vignettes/anecdotes, presents a narrative arch spanning a twenty year-period exploring cultural and identity collisions between and within the Indigenous population and the Europeans in this neocolonial society.
While Shay is not always present in the vignettes, she is always hovering as an observer, as she tries to reconcile the rifts in her marriage, her identity as being a “mistress” to a “plantation” house, the cost of being an outsider and the higher cost of belonging to the privileged class and the history as a Black woman in Africa.
I appreciated all the wonderful historical and cultural details of the Malagasy world, and how the people live with dignity as they and their country become a fetish exotic adventure destination for others.
This is an eloquent and elegant introspective read as the topics of identity expectations and being the life you want, how to enjoy your success yet still honoring your ancestry, and how survival is knowing your worth and the making the best with what you have to offer are presented from a fresh perspective on cultural collisions and the dualities and multiplicities that exist within us.
Rating: really liked it
This isn’t a one size fits all novel. It isn’t for everyone, but it hit a sweet spot for me. It was unfamiliar, foreign, colorful, erotic, and otherworldly at times. The protagonist is a Black American professor, Shay, who married an older Italian entrepreneur, Senna. On his urging, they buy a vacation villa in a small (fictional) beach village, Naratrany, in Madagascar, as newlyweds in the latter part of the 90s. They are both multilingual (but don’t speak the island languages), and live in Milan, but return to the villa during two month-long vacations annually. The novel covers over two decades in their life, especially at their villa, Red House.
Before I talk about the book, I’ll mention the structure. Each chapter has an intriguing title, my favorite being Elephants’ Graveyard. At times, I felt that I was reading a series of vignettes, although there was always Shay as a through line and it followed a mostly linear flow. But some of the chapters could also be lifted from the book and made into it’s own very short story, so I wasn’t surprised when I found out that at least one was actually just that, in the New Yorker. But it didn’t diminish the story for me.
Shay feels awkward at first, being a “mistress” of a house with the Black staff subordinated to her—much connection in her head with slavery. She does make a good friend in Bertine the head housekeeper, who notices that Shay and Senna fight a lot (they only squabble in Madagascar, not in Milan), and Bertine steps in to help Shay. This is when it gets exotic and speaks to the animism beliefs of the island inhabitants. Shay attends a ceremony that had me holding my breath a few times.
Over the decades, Bertine remains Shay’s closest confidante. Senna is often on fishing expeditions or business ventures when they are in Naratrany. He’s got libertine tendencies—he and Shay are very different individuals. They have two children, who travel with them during the vacations, and grow up with native Naratranians, ex-pats, and Europeans and others who came to the island. The children aren’t a prime ingredient of the narrative; mostly it is about Shay and her perspective, experiences, and relationship with Senna and the way she interacts with her staff and others on the island, especially Bertine, my second favorite character.
Madagascar is a complex place with layers of class structure and social sensibilities. And sex between islanders and people of other cultures plays a large part— part of survival, too. Often, the story questions its own morality and perspective, which is done with ease in third-person limited POV. No narrator broadcasts or tells you what to think or judge about the characters--only as it pertains to Shay’s own learning curve and evolving comprehension. Moreover, it is not a traditional arc storyline—you just have to follow it wherever it leads you.
Andrea Lee is both erudite and allusive in her prose, often including snippets of French or Italian (some on the island speak French). There are also superbly incorporated references to songs, poems, and literature from all over the world. I felt smarter as I progressed. :) Mostly, I enjoyed the unique assortment of individuals and concerns of the various characters that come to Red House, which is the focal point of the novel. Lee’s sense of place is scintillating, sensual, gripping, as are her figures of speech and descriptions.
“Madagascar has its own fabulously complex identity…Building on such terrain has consequences: attachments root and expand in unexpected corners, the way that a tough network of sea grapes can cover a whole beach.”
If you are up for a strange and fascinating journey, with a vivid, chimerical, spirit-infused culture, and a reading experience that bends beyond the usual borders, I recommend you give this book a go. The final page, in its action, may have been a bit twee, but I understood it in a more sublime sense, too. Themes of heritage, family, acceptance, love, and betrayal are addressed--juicy to the core, but nuanced, and dream-like at its edges.
Thank you to the publishers at Scribner for sending me a copy.
Rating: really liked it
Red Island House reads like a series of interconnected short stories. It was not always linear but at no time did I feel lost. Our main character Shay is an African-American professor who marries an Italian businessman and goes to live with him in Naples. He has built a vacation home on a small island off the coast of Madagascar. The book opens with the building of this island home. It is supposed to be cursed as he does not follow the tradition of honoring the people or the land.
When Shay arrives at the red house the home is being managed by a Greek overseer who is known for his cruelty. Her husband's support of the Greek after Shay and he fallout is a clear indication of how Senna views her and her position. Shay comes to befriend some of the Malagasy and who show her how to manage the situation. Shortly she starts to feel guilty of her position; her gifts come to signal bribes and her good advice exacerbates issues. She comes to realize that al;thoughher skin is the same that she is not African and is ignorant of traditional practices. I found this part of the book interesting as most books that deal with differences within the diaspora do not address culture and differences in mindset. Shay lives by an American ideal and even her best of intentions could create problems in this very different world. Another interesting point was the idea of black fetishism. Just because a white person is in a relationship with a person of color does not mean that they are not prejudiced. They may be fulfilling some type of fantasy. For Senna this meant finding a vacation villa in a tropical setting and getting himself a dark skinned wife. These were mere trophies for him.
Lee also addresses sexual exploitation and colonialism's role in driving prostitution in third world countries. The imprint that tourists have goes beyond their participation in the sex trade including children left behind by their holiday romances.
Red Island House may be a short book but it is full of heavy themes and descriptive language that is evocative of place. Shay's character was well drawn out and we see her grow and learn and she comes to know the people and the place.
This was a gem of a debut.
Rating: really liked it
Thoughts soon.
Rating: really liked it
Excellent writing and close to unique. This is novel combined themes for varying focus to the primes amid short stories that highlight terrific characterizations of many tribal, ethnic languages, racial groups and classes of humans and their cultures for coastal island Madagascar locale.
It holds extraordinary place feel with tangible ex-pat and divided loyalties cultural pulls. But at the same time it is whole piece connected. The mood is often serious but at the same moment or two flamboyant.
4.5 stars. There are voids of time skipping which prevent me from rounding it up. But from the observations of Shay (Black American married to an Italian and living 3/4th or more of the year in Milan with the Red House their vacation home)- it's a great read.
Recommending this one for something quite different from the usual modern fiction. Better too than most, by far.
I do understand to read quite a bit of Italian and very much of French. I do have to admit that this really helped me get tons of nuance here. My enjoyment for this book was a lush 5 stars.
Rating: really liked it
Now and then I come upon a novel so artfully written, so evocative of a place, and so packed with ideas that I want to continue thinking about it rather than move on to another book. Andrea Lee’s The Red Island House is one of those books.
Set in Madagascar and revolving around the dream vacation home built by Senna, a wealthy Italian businessman, for himself and his new African American wife, a literature professor and translator named Shay, Red Island House is comprised of a series of short stories occurring over the years of the couple’s marriage. Time after time, they leave their busy Milan life behind to spend time on their beach estate in one of the world’s poorest countries. During an interview with New Yorker, Lee spoke of her novel’s unusual but highly successful structure: “I see the form as a private challenge, a sort of balancing act; each story must be satisfying on its own but also be a bead on a string that joins it with others.” Each of those beads on a string focuses on Shay’s encounters with the diverse people populating Madagascar and sparking her thoughts about social class, race, and neo-colonialism. As a wealthy black intellectual in a country where powerful whites have traditionally dominated poor, uneducated natives, she is caught between cultures and forced to ponder what she experiences personally and observes around her.
In the opening story, “The Packet War,” newlywed Shay arrives at the house her husband insists he built for her but in which she has had no say. A stranger in a strange home and land, she continues to have no voice in the goings on, and a good relationship with her husband disintegrates. Senna had been warned about the need for, but refused to follow the custom of, throwing a housewarming party for the local natives, and ignoring local customs could result in evil curses. Only the native housekeeper, Bertine la Grande has a solution for Shay’s unhappiness, and it involves a clandestine visit to a village sorcerer. Readers who wonder about the story’s title, “The Packet War,” will understand by story’s end.
The third story, “Blondes,” opens in a beauty shop as Shay undergoes a slow-paced pedicure and manicure. What seems like an unpromising beginning changes as Caroline la Blonde walks in the door. A beautiful black woman with a reputation for captivating wealthy European men, Caroline has come to have her blond sewn-in hair extensions removed, her own hair trimmed and redyed to match, and the extensions reattached. As Shay’s feet soak in a plastic pan, her mind wanders back to her California childhood, to her encounters with blond classmates, to the various ways she styled her own black curly head over the years, and the significance of being blond in Madagascar. She thinks of Helle, an elderly blond German widow, who frequently visited the red island house and whom Shay viewed as a remnant of the past, a white woman forever trapped in the colonialist mentality. She watches Caroline, the “blond” black woman, who has made her fortune from European men, and observes her domineering interaction with the cowed Frenchman who comes to pay the beauty shop and to help her into the car awaiting outside.
These are only a brief look at two of the beads that make up Andrea Lee’s insightful novel. An American permanently living in Italy, Lee and her husband have frequently traveled to Madagascar where she has experienced first-hand the types of people and situations she brings to life through her words—the natives, the outsiders, and the friction between them. In her New Yorker interview, she remarks, “I long ago dubbed this phenomenon “paradise twisted,” and I chose to illustrate it in a series of stories, each of which sheds a different light on the people and place.”
My thanks to NetGalley for an advance reader copy of Andrea Lee’s newest book.
Rating: really liked it
Very beautiful written and compelling main character to follow. Was easy getting invested in and hard to put down, highly recommend this book. Not sure what to say though but the book was just as great as the premise made it out to be
Rating: really liked it
A lush, lyrical, and dense saga about place, love, culture and identity with a touch of magical realism....
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.
My Review of Red Island House for @bookpage:
https://bookpage.com/reviews/26081-an...
Rating: really liked it
I was thrilled to receive an ARC of this book because I have never read a book that is set in Madagascar, and I knew very little about the country itself. I eagerly read the first chapter, which took me on a journey of a young Black American woman learning the mysteries of her new house in Madagascar. The chapter hinted at the promise of the rest of the story -- how does an American deal with a country of such unspoken mystery and class/colonization issues, while she is still learning how to navigate these things in her own country, and with her own marriage to a white European? I was excited to read the rest of the book, but I didn't realize that this is not really a novel. It's a series of stories and vignettes as observed by Shay, the American woman who lives with her husband Senna in Milan, and vacations in Madagascar.
It took me forever to get through this book. It was well written, but it wasn't interesting in the slightest, which is too bad. The stories that Shay relays, often to other foreign friends, are generally not that interesting. There isn't much about the characters, there isn't much dialogue. Everything is told through Shay's knowledge, who is very much aware of the fact that she is a tourist in the country she calls home for a few months of the year. It sounds like that awareness would be interesting, but it makes every character and every situation seem as though it's probably not happening the way Shay thinks it is happening. Or that behind the scenes, in places where Shay does not venture, there is a very different story happening. And because I wasn't hearing much directly from the characters themselves, I didn't much care about what Shay thought about the situation she was able to be completely separate from. The only time my attention was even a little bit caught was toward the end of the book when the story shifts slightly to Bertine, the housekeeper of the Red House. And I think the only reason why I didn't feel like falling asleep while reading this chapter is because Bertine is such a presence in the first chapter of this book, the one I was so intrigued by.
I wish the rest of the book had lived up to that first chapter. I would have loved to hear more about Shay's life in Italy, and how her children were affected by growing up in Italy and in Madagascar. I would have loved to hear more about her relationship to Senna. I would have loved to read about how she navigated her life as a foreigner in Italy, and as a foreigner in a country where she looks more like the people, but is so obviously not one of them. The book brushes against these issues, but doesn't dive into them, making this story sit on the surface of something that could be great, but is just dull.
One note though: the author does list some writers at the end of the book that are finally being translated into English. I would be interested in reading their works, and I'm glad to know their names. If you already read French, then these writers are already available to you.
Rating: really liked it
*This book was received as an advanced reader's copy from NetGalley.
Red Island House is one of the more unusual books I've read this year. Not in the sense of dystopia, invention, or paranormal; but rather, that it takes you to a setting that is not one that I've encountered in a lot of books. It takes you to Madagascar, by way of an unusual set of characters.
Shay is a professor from America who falls in love with an Italian several years her senior. Wealthy, when she meets him he is in the middle of building his dream house on some property in Madagascar, and she soon finds herself the lady of the house. This causes internal conflict, and outward conflict as Shay herself is African American and has to adjust with interacting with the people of color around her, but from a standpoint that she views as almost colonial or hearkening back to plantations. This confusion, combined with a tumultuous relationship, gives her a unique story across this backdrop that spans decades.
I had a hard time relating with Shay. An independent, intelligent woman in the beginning, I won't say that she loses that sense; but with the troubles in her marriage I do wonder at her interactions. Maybe it's the globe-setter type of culture that comes with her marriage being in Italy and the vacationing in other places that takes it out of context for me. But, and this will be a spoiler, (view spoiler)
[I just can't see her as a character that would accept infidelity. And yet she does, so many times through this book. (hide spoiler)] Senna, her husband, I'm never fond of, but I'm not attracted to the brash type of which he is. But really, this is Shay's story, not Senna's, so he's more of an afterthought anyway. There are plenty of other characters; some likable, some comedic, some with stories that take Shay out of her comfort zone, and they're all pretty important to the story in their own way, even if you don't take a liking to them.
While I enjoyed the plot and the meandering it sometimes took; the timeline was a bit rougher for me. We meandered over the first few years of their marriage and then wham, 5 years later, wham, 10 years later; I would have liked to not have as large of gaps and a more cohesive storyline. I think all of the themes were important; Shay's struggle with identity and how she should act on the island, the various trials and tribulations, the uncomfort and acceptableness of the sex-work on the island (which no doubt reflects a lot of tourist areas in the world with the need for money causing people to enter a line of work they might not have otherwise).
Overall, for me this book was important in its message, but I wouldn't call it enjoyable. The characters struggles and joys caused a lot of empathy, but it was a hard read.
Review by M. Reynard 2020
Rating: really liked it
This book. THIS book was one of two that gave me all that I was looking for at the exact time I needed a pick me up. I have so much to say, but I don’t think it will adequately explain how much I loved it. So I’ll keep it as short as I can.
The book was a series of short, mostly chronological stories, based around the idea, existence and transformation of the titular red island house. The book mostly follows the protagonist, and African American woman, living as a professor in Milan, who meets and marries a much older Italian business man who builds a vacation home for them in Madagascar. As the reader, you’re an omni-present for the love, luxury, pain and loss the couple experiences because of, within and involving this paradise amidst the African island. Written in a variation of chronological order I hadn’t seen before, the book is filled with vivid descriptions of the lush scenery and intriguing cultural nuances.
My favorite aspects of the book were:
1. The protagonist, Shay - she was a beautiful, educated, multilingual, highly intelligent black woman who lived a opulent life with humility and grace. I loved that she was very aware of her privileges while still maintaining her unique views about race and racism. I didn’t always agree with her actions or statements, but I do think it was true to her character’s life and journey, so I was ultimately okay with it.
2. The richness of the story. It was written so incredibly well. Another reviewer compared it to a very rich piece of chocolate cake, and I couldn’t agree more. I could only consume it one story at a time in order to take in all the author was sharing and reflect to ensure I got what I supposed to out of it. Most stories were a bit lengthy, but I think it was necessary for the stories being told.
As you can tell by my short (lol) review, I fell in love with this book and can definitely see myself re-reading it again in the near future. It was an experience I wasn’t expecting but was glad to have. 5 stars!
Rating: really liked it
Beautifully written, this is more like a collection of stories that spans over twenty years that a couple has owned The Red Island House on an beach in Madagascar.
Senna, the husband, has built an ostentatious vacation villa and Shay, the wife, becomes the reluctant mistress of it.
At first she just observes the goings on but as she and Senna go through an unstable marriage, raise their children, and come and go, establishing their own traditions at the house, Shay becomes more entangled in the lives of others and the clashes of two cultures.
Shay was such a strong character. I really liked her from the beginning and completely loved the way she reconciled the choices made not based on the person but their environment and upbringing.
I found it completely mesmerizing and was held captive from the first page.
Rating: really liked it
A linked short story collection that spans 20 years or so on Naratrany, a small (fictional) island off of northwest Madagascar, and stars an odd couple. Senna is a rich Italian businessman; Shay is an African American professor 15 years his junior. They meet at a wedding in Como and Senna builds his tropical island getaway at the same time as he courts her. Lee plays up the irony of the fact that Shay ends up being the lady of the house, served by all Black staff.
Colonial attitudes linger among the white incomers. I loved the long first story, “The Packet War,” in which Shay has a low-key feud with Senna’s bombastic Greek overseer, Kristos. The locals believe that, because Senna did not throw a traditional housewarming party for his opulent complex, the Red House is cursed (there are some magic realist scenes reflecting this, and the servants prescribe Shay some rituals to perform to combat it). And the same comes to seem true of their marriage. Or does their partnership just have your average ups and downs?
Shay and Senna eventually have two children, Roby and Augustina, and spend most of the year in Italy, only coming back to Madagascar for long holidays in the summer and winter. (view spoiler)
[She tolerates her husband’s presumed affairs until he has one so blatant she can’t ignore it. By this time their children are grown and Senna uses the Red House for get-togethers with his ageing playboy friends. Both have realized how little they have in common. They spend much of their time apart; the love that once bound them despite their differences appears to be gone.
as the fascination of their mutual foreignness wears away over the years, they find they share few tastes and interests outside of family life, and it is easy to let that independence pull them apart.
The long story of their love and marriage has always been full of stops and starts, dependent on dashingly improvised bridges over differences in temperament and culture.
By the end of the book they’re facing the fact that they need to make a decision on whether to try to heal their rift or formalize it.
The message I take from this novel is that, if coming from very different backgrounds, you may have to put in extra effort to make a partnership work. Perhaps, too, to an extent, Senna and Shay could be read as symbols of the colonizer and the exotic prey. But there’s a cautionary tale here for all of us in long-term relationships: it’s easy to drift apart. (I remember, at the time of my parents’ divorce, my mother’s colleague astutely noting that their house was too big, such that it was too easy for them to live separate lives in it.) (hide spoiler)]In general, I liked Lee’s passages describing Madagascar (I was interested to note the Chinese infrastructure projects), and the stories that focus on this family. Others about peripheral characters – beauty parlour customers, a local half-Italian boy, visits from friends – engaged me less, and I was irked by the present tense, so pervasive that it’s even used to, nonsensically, describe actions that took place in the past. I doubt I’d try another by Lee.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
