Book Review: How The One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
Reuben Essien takes us through Cherie Jones' debut crime thriller set in Barbados.
A review of How The One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones. A crime thriller which takes place over one hot and unruly Barbadian summer in 1984.
By Reuben Essien
Barbados is a relatively wealthy Caribbean island which has enjoyed long-standing political stability and low crime. For this, but also its white sand beaches, palm trees, and "friendly locals", it is often depicted as a Paradise. The capitalisation of Paradise here is not my own, I'm employing the language of Cherie Jones. In her debut novel How The One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House (2021) Jones locates unfamiliar things onto the modern imaginary of Barbados: murder, rape, poverty and exploitation; the novel is a crime thriller which takes place over one hot and unruly Barbadian summer in 1984.
A non-linear plot reveals the story of a murder. Adan Primus has killed a wealthy British tourist in a home burglary gone awry. His wife Lala Primus (formerly Wilkinson) becomes embroiled in the murder in the pair's attempt to hide what he has done. In the tense weeks which follow, as Adan hides out, a tragic accident sees the pair's newborn fall from its mother's arms to the floor as Adan tries to wrestle the baby from Lala, the baby dies. The couple cover up the death, staging a kidnapping of the child and the subsequent discovery of the body. There are now two parallel murder investigations which the police do not realise are linked by the same culprits: Adan and Lala Primus.
The fable of The One Armed Sister, which is told in the prologue, is the lynchpin of this novel. In this fable which Lala's grandmother tells her as a warning, an adventurous girl travels into the tunnels that run under the island despite her mother's warnings and is rewarded with the loss of her arm as a monster lurking in the dark bites it off. When the teenage Lala spits facetiously that she is sure that 'it wouldn't be so bad having one arm', that the girl could still have a house of her own, her grandmother scoffs at this idea "Stupid girl how she gonna sweep it" she says. Hence the novel's name. The fable is about the daring and unruliness of brave women and the evil of men. Men in the fable and the novel are the dark and enticing tunnel and the monsters which lurk within it. In the novel's introduction, Jones says that "Domestic violence and especially violence against women, is a continuing social problem in the Caribbean." She quotes Navi Pillay former UN High Commissioner who buttresses this statement. The novel reminded me of other black feminist fiction in both its style and its unflinching portrayal of domestic violence, incest and rape in the household: The Colour Purple (1982), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), The Bluest Eye (1970) (which Jones has cited as an inspiration). At times, however, the novel seems to veer towards domestic horror in the near cartoonish evil it portrays in 'Adan's house'.
“Despite the author's focus on the novel's themes of gendered violence, more than anything else this novel reads as an economic story.”
Lala braids tourists' hair on the beach, Adan sells weed to them, Tone sells jet ski rides and then he sells sex, so too does Sheba, Mira Whalen (wife of the murdered Peter Whalen) is a former local who marries a rich tourist after loitering in expensive hotels. The novel is about tourism, it's at the centre of these characters' lives as both their salvation and oppression. It seems that nearly everywhere in the world the story of tourism is one of exploitation and extraction, however in places with colonial history it is especially awkward because it mirrors the exploitative extractive practices of the past and brings into focus the economic injustices of today. The murder of rich tourist Peter Whalen, then, is the eruption of an animus that bubbles under the surface of polite and 'civilised' exchanges between tourists and locals. The murder is a fantasy of retribution, it seeks justice with ill means, and it is this murder which allows us in The One Armed Sister to examine how economic relationships condition social ones.
My struggle with the novel was personal: Lala. Lala is the protagonist of this novel, but she is not, to me, a particularly compelling one. Even though we understand Lala to be own way (hard-headed) to be the sister that travels into the tunnel, she feels incredibly passive. Lala is 'done to' from prologue to epilogue. The novel does not move by things that Lala has done but by decisions others make about her. Her grandmother is overbearing and cruel and kicks her out, Tone pursues her and takes her virginity then leaves, Adan swallows her like the monster from the tunnel, and Sergeant Beckles sets his eyes on Lala and decides that she murdered her child. Wilma says as much about Lala, specifically in reference to her effect on men, it is stated that there is a Wilkinson way, "A grown man cannot help himself in the presence of a young Wilkinson", "there would come a day when Adan would wish he had never met Lala"; in this way, Lala has herself done very little, she's simply a magnet, even her bewitching ways do not belong to her but her blood. She moves into new situations of entrapment, more by the force of the current than by swimming. This makes her a protagonist which though endearing, is not particularly interesting.
“Nevertheless, the novel is strong. It showed me a Barbados that I could feel but not see.”
It is thoughtful, intelligent, and perhaps familiar in how it recalls Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston, but thoroughly new in its fresh and insightful review of economic exploitation in modern Barbados. I would end on a quote from the foreword of Hilary Beckles Corporate Power in Barbados (1989) which speaks to the silent animus Jones has expertly explored here:
"Independence for Caribbean states represented a transfer of authority of governance but the power of economic wealth and control was retained by the old oligarchies".