In Tree of Life: A Novel of the Caribbean (1992), Maryse Conde’s third book is another epic family and generational exploration.
It begins in
Guadaloupe, in the Caribbean, at the turn of the twentieth century when the
Americans were constructing the Panama Canal, where Albert Louis wants to
change his life. From the sugar
plantations he gains a job on the explosive team, clearing trees, in
preparation for the canal.
Albert has
five sisters: Nirva, Merita, Sandrine, Gerda, and Maroussia, and five sons to
two wives (Liza and Elaise): Bert, Jacob, Serge, Rene, and Jean. Liza dies in
childbirth with Bert, and Elaise dies at age 42, when the war between Germany
and France began to split the family apart. Serge and Rene fought viciously;
Serge was a pacifist and Rene joined General de Gaulle, only to die in battle.
Jean wanted to be a school teacher, like his mother, and became a writer. Bert
dies young, “in an accident” and Jacob travels to Paris.
The narrator
is Claude Elaise Louis, referred to as Coco, who describes herself as “the
illegitimate daughter of Thecla, herself the illegimate and much-desired
daughter of Tima and Jacob, Jacob himself the favourite son on the one side,
unloved on the other, of Bonnemma Elaise, known as God’s Own Child, and of
Albert, called the Soubarou, who went
off to sweat away his sweat and toil his toil in Panama in order to earn some
gold and learn that when it comes right down to it, it buys nothing!” And that
is just about the gist of the novel.
Through
travel, jobs, poverty and wealth, death, love and affairs, the family line
focuses on Coco, born in secret in Paris in 1960 when her mother, Thecla, was
18 years old, to a man who would not marry her mother. Raised by Thecla and her
New York partner, Manuel, who is studying for his doctorate degree, they move
from Paris to New York to Paris. Thecla marries Pierre Levasseur in Paris in
1968, but eventually returns to Manuel and move to the Caribbean.
While the
title of the novel indicates that it is a novel of the Caribbean, it’s actually
about a man who leaves the Caribbean and of his grand-daughter who returns. In
between there are secrets and surprises, sudden deaths and unexpected births,
changes of fortune and the never-ending search for a fulfilled life. The
brothers take different paths, and Coco’s two great-uncles, Jacob and Jean are
as different as Serge and Rene: “Does a tree bear two different kinds of fruit?
From Part Four, the story of the Caribbean begins.
The
easy-flowing style of Conde makes this a pleasant, interesting read, although
not as powerful as her first epic, Segu.
It is also easy to lose track of who marries whom, the mistresses and the
wives, the many deaths, what secrets they are escaping, and to what country
they flee. Nevertheless, the essence is that no matter where you or what
happens along the way, ancestry is in the blood. As Coco says, “how could I
deny the blood of my entire ancestry?”
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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