REVIEW: Golden Child by Claire Adam @hogarthbooks @tlcbooktours @Claire_Trini
Golden Child
by Claire Adam
Thank you to Hogarth and TLC Book Tours for this free copy!
Publisher: SJP for Hogarth
Publish Date: January 29, 2019
Hardcover
288 Pages
Standalone
Genres: Literary Fiction, Contemporary
A deeply affecting debut novel set in Trinidad, following the lives of a family as they navigate impossible choices about scarcity, loyalty, and love
Rural Trinidad: a brick house on stilts surrounded by bush; a family, quietly surviving, just trying to live a decent life. Clyde, the father, works long, exhausting shifts at the petroleum plant in southern Trinidad; Joy, his wife, looks after the home. Their two sons, thirteen years old, wake early every morning to travel to the capital, Port of Spain, for school. They are twins but nothing alike: Paul has always been considered odd, while Peter is widely believed to be a genius, destined for greatness.
When Paul goes walking in the bush one afternoon and doesn't come home, Clyde is forced to go looking for him, this child who has caused him endless trouble already, and who he has never really understood. And as the hours turn to days, and Clyde begins to understand Paul's fate, his world shatters--leaving him faced with a decision no parent should ever have to make.
Like the Trinidadian landscape itself, Golden Child is both beautiful and unsettling; a resoundingly human story of aspiration, betrayal, and love.
Uff. The choices parents have to make. This is an interesting book. I love these types of books that get you thinking. We're looking at a book that will definitely make you feel... but for me, I didn't quite get that impact until the end. Then my emotions kind of spiked and fell with different thoughts and boy do I love it when a book does that.
We get different POVs but the majority of it is through Clyde's eyes. There's back and forth in timeline and while the writing is beautiful, it did fall a little stale for me in keeping me absolutely locked in the pages. What's great about this book is that it will give you a perspective that maybe you won't agree with, but it will also make you think that different people are under different circumstances and pressures and their choices are molded by these. While this can be hard to take for some readers, I found this absolutely fascinating. Yes, I was like WHAT?! OMG. HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?! But who is to say what is right or wrong when it comes to someone else's family and culture?
As a debut novel, I am floored. I'm unsure about how I felt about the ending, even though that is what makes the book so powerful. I wasn't as invested in the characters as much as I had hoped to be, however, seeing this unfold in my mind's eye was kind of like being a foreigner in Trinidad watching a live movie. Get me?
This will definitely be an interesting one for some readers.
★★★☆
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