2014 read #98: The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson.

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson
394 pages
Published 2003
Read from October 12 to October 15
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5

Hopkinson's first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, was the paradigm of a first novel, cautious and conventional, needing polish but telling a basic tale with a reasonable level of competence -- exactly the sort of novel you'd expect to win a "first novel" contest in the late '90s. Hopkinson's storytelling matured somewhat with Midnight Robber, a book daring in its language but, despite this newfound panache, still rather workmanlike in its plot and progression. The Salt Roads takes a massive leap in complexity and scope over the previous novels, an audacious story encompassing three women of African descent, enslaved in different ways in different times, unknowingly birthing and educating a goddess, and a brief look at that goddess' attempts to save, preserve, and liberate her people. Sheer boldness and painfulness of subject matter, however, only carries a novel so far, and Hopkinson's scattershot experimental narration does not cohere into as powerful statement as one could wish.