The Drowned Forest
(By Angela Barry)
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| Author | Angela Barry |
Told through a group of characters brought together in shared responsibility for Genesis, a young Black adolescent girl on the verge of incarceration as a juvenile offender, and by Genesis herself, Barry explores a clashing of subcultures, each with the sense that their Bermuda is the one that possesses the island’s virtues. There is Nina, from the respectable Black middle-class, with her own prickly uncertainties and moral hang-ups; Lizzie, fighting for her own space in a Portuguese family railing against changing times; Tess, battling with guilt over her white privilege and her reluctance to lose its benefits; and Hugh, a young Welshman who has come to the island to find himself. Angela Barry weaves a rich and absorbing narrative in which these different perspectives – insider/outsider, youth/age, Black / white – are each given sympathetic space and a convincing sense of growth through the span of the novel. Above all, in the character of Genesis, Barry creates a dynamic and winning portrayal of the energies, hopes, conscience and vulnerabilities of youth. Beyond the human world with all its divisions, there are the little-known islands of Bermuda, for whose stunning beauties and sometimes urban ugliness Barry has a vividly descriptive eye.”
