Born in London, but raised in a flyspeck village in Guyana, Oonya Kempadoo has now preserved her youth in exquisite amber. Buxton Spice will no doubt be compared to the work of Jamaica Kincaid, and the analogy is actually an instructive one (beyond the fact that both authors are Caribbean women). Kempadoo too has found her own idiom for rendering the magical or mundane perceptions of childhood. Even so pedestrian an activity as rollerskating seems to be taking place for the first time: We tottered on to the road and set off. My legs felt like matchsticks with huge weights on the ends. Looked ridiculous, but was rollerskates and we had them first. The sound of hard plastic on the gritty asphalt cleared the cool night air for us to come sailing through. Up and down the road. Past the fellars watching. The passage above, with its low-key lyricism and artful omission, is fairly typical of Kempadoo's narrator, Lula. The presence of the fellars is typical, too. For Buxton Spice is very much a narrative of sexual awakening--its plot can almost be summarized in a single word, puberty. Lula gets a nominal course in sex ed by observing the three whores in her tiny village of Tamarind Grove. But at one point, she and three girlfriends pair off into husband-and-wife teams and play house--with sufficient realism to include a boudoir interlude. Their imaginary lovemaking, which features a battery as a kind of low-tech dildo, is a tour de force of eroticism and giggly absurdity.

Buxton Spice is not, however, a mere exercise in dirty dancing. It includes many fine bits of small-town portraiture, such as this quick take on a Portuguese store-owner: "Ricardo was pink and meticulous. When he was sober he had a slow solid way of moving and hardly spoke in the house. Slept in the shop. His clothes had to match." There are also oblique lessons in Guyana's politics and caste system. What's missing, perhaps, is a sense of narrative drive: Kempadoo puts her characters on their appointed paths but seldom manages much in the way of collision. Still, her book is an auspicious and utterly distinctive slice of small-town life. What's more, it has the ring of truth to it: this, we're persuaded, is Lula's song of experience, battery-powered as it may be.


From Publishers Weekly
Kempadoo's semi-autobiographical first novel follows bright, sensitive Lula, a girl growing up in Guyana, through her first frightening and thrilling pubescent milestones. In the early 1970s, when Guyana is beset by racial friction between the East Indian and Afro-Caribbean populations, Lula and her racially mixed family find themselves at the center of conflict in their town of Tamarind Grove. A bastion of the PNC (People's National Congress), Tamarind Grove is run by Our Comrade Linden Forbes Burnham, the leader of the Black Socialist Party, and Lula's progress unfolds as a series of vignettes set against this volatile environment. Omnipresent witness to these adventures is the Buxton Spice mango treeAa mute embodiment of wisdom and identityAwhose branches hang over the family home. Madmen, prostitutes, clan scandals, murders, rum shacks and irrepressible sexual energy hasten Lula's passage from childhood to womanhood, but Kempadoo describes her sexual awakening with eloquence, empathy, astonishing frankness and ebullience: "I pushed my hips up to the base of the tap, legs splayed up against the wall, hands gripping the tap-head.... Hammering on the top of the Tip while the bomb in me was growing, making my heart faster, muscles tighter... The Tip going to blow off. Oh Me Lawd!" Kempadoo captures the natural beauty of Guyana and the never-ending feast of sensual pleasures: the heat, the foliage, the heavy air and the townspeople, their postures, habits and personalities jumping off the page. But most dazzling is her deft transliteration of language; her words contract and run together, inventively embedding the text with the rocking lilt of Guyanese Creole. Already praised in the U.K., the narrative describes the confusion and changes of puberty with a breathtaking accuracy that both documents a specifically Guyanese experience and also draws a forthright parallel to the many universal discoveries of adolescence. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Lula, the mixed-race heroine of Kempadoo's first novel, comes of age in a remote Caribbean village in the 1970s. Kempadoo describes Lula's innocent childhood in the same rich, sensuous prose she uses for the girl's growing awareness of her own sexuality, which emerges just as the government's abusive "People's Militia" arrives to occupy her village. Some of the young men join its ranks in search of a steady income and personal power, and Lula's life changes forever when her mother's arrest drives the family into political exile. Kempadoo displays a rare skill in describing the social and political dynamics of a community and the personal lives of her characters with beautifully observed detail, never allowing the reader to become bogged down. Her words seem to dance lightly upon the page. Highly recommended for all libraries.ACarolyn Ellis Gonzalez, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1999
Kempadoo's Caribbean argot is precise and fluid, enriching this debut with bawdness, violence and raucous humor.


From Booklist
Lula, Kempadoo's inquisitive young narrator, doesn't like the Buxton Spice mango tree that towers over her family's house. She believes that it knows all and reveals nothing, and Lula wants to be privy to life's secrets, especially the mystery of sex. She and her friends view their Guyanese village as theater. There's mad Uncle Joe, whom the girls tease mercilessly into having an erection; Bullet, the proud whore; and libidinous Iggy DeAbro, one of 14 Portuguese children living next door. Of mixed East Indian, African, and European descent, Lula is sensuous and intuitive, and Kempadoo has her describe her world in lush and loving detail. A frank sexual voyeur, Lula is also an avid witness to violence, of which there is an increasing amount in her troubled homeland. Clearly her idyll will be short-lived owing to political and racial unrest and her impending coming-of-age, a precariousness that shadows Kempadoo's lithe, earthy, and enchanting portrait of a young girl on an island that should be paradise but is something far more human. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
Lyrically written but underplotted debut, by a Britisher of Guyanese descent, in which a young woman's growing sexuality parallels the deteriorating political situation in her native town. Kempadoos story, told in a sometimes challenging patois, is set in 1970s Guyana, run by autocrat Forbes Burnham and his henchmen. Lula, the young narrator, is filled with the burgeoning sensuality of incipient adolescence, but she is also aware of a larger and more menacing outside world that increasingly intrudes into Tamarind Grove. In chapters that are more episodic than narrative, Lula describes the local residents, her leftist parents (political activists opposed to Burnham), and the events that culminate in the family leaving Tamarind Grove. The townspeople, like the fruit of the large Buxton Spice mango tree that grows near Lulas house, can be sweet, but they can also seem secretive and watchful. The town boasts four mad peopleone of whom, Uncle Joe, the children like to teaseand three prostitutes, Bullet, Sugar Baby, and Rumshop Cockroach. The hookers best customer is store-owner Ricardo DeAbro, of Portuguese descent like his wife, Emelda. Judy and Rachel DeAbro, their daughters, are Lula's best friends. Together, the girls play games in which they pretend to be husbands and wives making love. While Lula dreams of being touched again by Iggy, who once felt her up in a deserted classroom, the political situation worsens. Burnham's followers enroll local boys in a proto-fascist organization; police search Lula's house and briefly arrest her mother. Childhood ends when Lula learns that Judy has been having a secret affair with an older man, and political tensions force her family to flee to England. A fine, strong, and original voice, but the story seems more like a preliminary sketch than a full-fledged novel. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Back in print: an extraordinary first novel by "a writer to watch and to enjoy."*Told in the voice of a girl as she moves from childhood into adolescence, Buxton Spice is the story the town of Tamarind Grove: its eccentric families, its sweeping joys, and its sudden tragedies. The novel brings to life 1970s Guyana—a world at a cultural and political crossroads—and perfectly captures a child"s keen observations, sense of wonder, and the growing complexity of consciousness that marks the passage from innocence to experience."A superb, and superbly written, novel of childhood and childhood"s end . . . Kempadoo writes in a rich Creole, filling her story with kaleidoscopic images of Guyana"s coastal plains . . . Her story is also one of sexual awakening, and she explores these new feelings with a curiosity and freedom that are refreshing . . . Kempadoo"s novel, like the Buxton Spice mango tree, reveals its secrets, private and political, only sparingly until the bitter end."—Patrick Markee, New York Times Book Review"Oonya Kempadoo . . . has written a sexy, stirring, richly poetic semi-autobiographical first novel."—Gabriella Stern, Wall Street Journal"As juicy and ripe as the fruits drooping from the Buxton Spice mango tree . . . Kempadoo"s Caribbean argot is precise and fluid, enriching this debut with bawdiness, violence, and raucous humor."—Los Angeles Times"There is a salt freshness to Kempadoo"s writing, an immediacy which makes the reader catch breath for pleasure at the recognition of something exactly observed . . . She is a writer to watch and to enjoy, for her warmth, her fine intelligence and her striking use of language."—Paula Burnett, The Independent (London)*

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The time is the 1970s. The place is the coast of Guyana, a world of color and light, dust and heat, flesh and earth. Here in the cool, wood-floored home that doubles as a school and a community center, a young girl opens her window and breathes in the redolence of a Buxton Spice mango tree. And asks the tree to tell her its secret - and the secret of its indifference. Buxton Spice is the song of Oonya Kempadoo's young narrator, Lula, and the song of her ill-fated town of Tamarind Grove: its colorful inhabitants, its eccentric families, its sweeping joys and sudden tragedies. Here are the mud-red banks where Lula and her friends slide down into the milky tea water of the Broadie Canal. Here is the emerging sexuality of young girls who can see what the madness of desire - and men - can reap. And here, in a village torn between cultures, between the future and the past, will come an explosion of politics and violence ignited by the eternal human dividers of race, money, and religion.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jeneen Robinson

Buxton Spice is a sensual novel set in Guyana in the 1970s. First-time novelist Oonya Kempadoo succeeds in revealing childhood secrets as the pages unveil childhood sexual discovery and fantasy in all of its na￯﾿ﾽvet￯﾿ﾽ. This juvenile play is set against the background political tensions in this racially mixed Caribbean community. Kempadoo writes this colorful tale from the perspective of a young girl growing up in Tamarind Grove. Lula is one of four girlfriends on the brink of puberty, who explore their curiosities among each other. While each of the girls begins her adventure similarly, the story is made in the way they each come to terms with their individual sexualities. The girls all play house and dress up like wife and husband.

Lula's role as husband is further explored when she embraces her masculine side, or what she calls her "man-self." This pretense gives Lula the freedom to explore herself further through hobbies, language, gesture, and sexual experience. Kempadoo also allows the character to experiment with masturbation, which presents a safe gender-neutral ground for pre-adolescent discovery. An orgasmic ending leaves the reader anxiously anticipating who of the four will be the first to "take a man."

The Buxton Spice mango tree symbolizes an omniscient entity that "swells with knowledge." To Lula, this tree knows all, including her father's political undertakings to challenge the current regime, which ultimately disrupts the family order. A curious Lula is anxious to share in the tree's knowledge, but by the book's close, her relationship with the mango tree has taken a much different term. Written in a Creole dialect, this "biomythography" (as Audre Lorde coined the term) steams with the smell of flesh, the taste of tropical fruits, and the vivid colors of the Caribbean culture. The youthful language spins with erotic passion and desire for grown-up pleasures. Rhythmic poetic-prose lexicons create a soothing ambiance for reading. Buxton Spice is a spicy novel for readers and should be next on your reading list. It's the childhood diary you never dared to write. Get ready to rediscover those fantasies!

Library Journal

Lula, the mixed-race heroine of Kempadoo's first novel, comes of age in a remote Caribbean village in the 1970s. Kempadoo describes Lula's innocent childhood in the same rich, sensuous prose she uses for the girl's growing awareness of her own sexuality, which emerges just as the government's abusive "People's Militia" arrives to occupy her village. Some of the young men join its ranks in search of a steady income and personal power, and Lula's life changes forever when her mother's arrest drives the family into political exile. Kempadoo displays a rare skill in describing the social and political dynamics of a community and the personal lives of her characters with beautifully observed detail, never allowing the reader to become bogged down. Her words seem to dance lightly upon the page. Highly recommended for all libraries.--Carolyn Ellis Gonzalez, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Patrick Markee - The New York Times Book Review

...[A] superb, and superbly written, novel of childhood and childhood's end....Kempadoo writes in a rich creole, filling her story with kaleidoscopic images of Guyana's coastal plains....Her story is also one of sexual awakening, and she explores these new feelings with a curiosity and freedom that are refreshing....Kempadoo's novel, like the Buxton Spice mango tree, reveals its secrets, private and political, only sparingly until the bitter end.

Los Angeles Times

Kempadoo's Caribbean argot is precise and fluid, enriching this debut with bawdness, violence and raucous humor.

Kirkus Reviews

Lyrically written but underplotted debut, by a Britisher of Guyanese descent, in which a young woman's growing sexuality parallels the deteriorating political situation in her native town. Kempadoo's story, told in a sometimes challenging patois, is set in 1970s Guyana, run by autocrat Forbes Burnham and his henchmen. Lula, the young narrator, is filled with the burgeoning sensuality of incipient adolescence, but she is also aware of a larger and more menacing outside world that increasingly intrudes into Tamarind Grove. In chapters that are more episodic than narrative, Lula describes the local residents, her leftist parents (political activists opposed to Burnham), and the events that culminate in the family leaving Tamarind Grove. The townspeople, like the fruit of the large Buxton Spice mango tree that grows near Lula's house, can be sweet, but they can also seem secretive and watchful. The town boasts four mad people—one of whom, Uncle Joe, the children like to tease—and three prostitutes, Bullet, Sugar Baby, and Rumshop Cockroach. The hookers' best customer is store-owner Ricardo DeAbro, of Portuguese descent like his wife, Emelda. Judy and Rachel DeAbro, their daughters, are Lula's best friends. Together, the girls play games in which they pretend to be husbands and wives making love. While Lula dreams of being touched again by Iggy, who once felt her up in a deserted classroom, the political situation worsens. Burnham's followers enroll local boys in a proto-fascist organization; police search Lula's house and briefly arrest her mother. Childhood ends when Lula learns that Judy has been having a secret affair with an older man, and political tensions force her familyto flee to England. A fine, strong, and original voice, but the story seems more like a preliminary sketch than a full-fledged novel.