Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
189 pages
Published 2010
Read from January 20 to January 29
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Spoilers ahead!
The first half or so of this book is excellent. I love the narration, related by an unseen, often humorous, occasionally defensive storyteller, and the story itself (inspired by a Senegalese folk tale) has charm and heart to spare. But once the indigo-skinned djombi arrives to reclaim his powers of chaos from the wise and dutiful Paama, I felt that the tale went from sweet to a tad bit trite. Paama relearns the meaning of duty from all the afflictions and small graces of humanity that Chance shows her, returning to her gluttonous and self-absorbed husband to take care of him in his final days -- a definition of duty that I, for one, as a survivor of abuse and neglect, find rather distasteful. And Chance, for his part, relearns the value of human beings from his whirlwind tour with Paama, starting the path toward his titular redemption with an anticlimactic revelation that amounts to, "Oh, this one human being is all right, I forgot humans could be all right sometimes." It's all too pat and easy.
Lord's narrator chides people like me at the end. "Paama will be too tepid and mild a heroine for some, they will criticize her for caring for her estranged husband in his last days." Fair enough. Clearly this book and I won't see eye to eye about that, and purposefully so. All the same, I found Redemption in Indigo a warm and enjoyable little read.
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