Catching Readers With The Sea Light
The mindboggling and distinguished author, Edwidge Danticat, once again graces readers with her eloquent script and an enriching fable in her newest publication, Claire of the Sea Light.
This novel is set in Ville Rose, a small sea town in Haiti where a fisherman’s daughter named Claire Limye Lanme has gone missing. In the attempt to find the little girl, stories of the people of the town are told in a stream of consciousness that determines the fate of Claire, her father, and the entire town.
From a third person’s point of view this novel has a large range of impressionable characters like the gentle and kind-hearted Claire and her father Nozias (the poor and deprived fisherman) or Gaelle Cabet (the town’s strong willed and gritty fabric vendor). The storyline is separated in a way where each part establishes the individual history of each character. With every chapter a new character is introduced that becomes an essential part in the unraveling of the plot to find Claire.
Danticat does an impeccable job at stripping the characters to their core for the reader to empathize, favor and relate. The vital beauty of the novel is that the stories of the citizens of Ville Rose somehow interlace with Claire’s lineage and you are left with ever-changing emotions with every story that is told. The union of Nozias and Claire Nozias (Claire’s parents) is beautiful, simplistic and absolutely heart wrenching. It seems whenever I read Danticat novels it always leaves me either close to tears or completely sensitive and this paperback was no different.
Another aspect of the story is that you can feel that the reality of the story is much different from our modern life. It is full of life-threatening struggles that you would never imagine people go through daily. Much like in this novel, Danticat’s effortless, humbling and emotion-provoking lyrics has put her in America’s spotlight since the release of her best seller, Breath, Eyes, Memory (Oprah’s Book Club) and The Dew Breaker. She is an incredible writer, with her cool language and translations that have an unimaginable way of connecting the reader to Haitian culture. I resonate so much with Danticat as a writer (being a writer myself) not only because she is Haitian-American but, because she has gradually exposed me to aspects of my Haitian heritage which is something that I’ve never experienced before.
From beginning to end, this novel is consumed with fluctuating themes such as death, suffering, innocence, joy and the core of mortality. Within the last of its pages, the entire masterpiece comes together with the co-mingling of tragedy and relief that will leave the reader gasping for breath.
