Seduce

Word has spread that Seduce is dead, and mourners gather for her wake. But with Seduce in her coffin, her memories and consciousness of those around her persist. There are those like Hyacinth who have come to make sure that that “dutty filthy woman” has finally ceased to be the temptation of the husbands of decent, respectable women. Seduce’s daughter, Glory, full of thwarted love and shame, hopes for yet fears the rescue of her mother’s soul while her grandchildren, Son and Loo, both in different ways marked by their upbringing in a dysfunctional home, search to find something positive in Seduce’s life for themselves. Even her former lover, Mikey, comes to make his peace. Set on the mythical Church Island in the Caribbean, upstanding sanctity and the vigorous life of profanity, the old ways and the new, fight over Seduce in the person of Pastor Collins and Seduce’s old colleagues in the flesh, the Lampis. In this remarkable debut novel, told in nation-language prose that is poetic, delicate, vulgar, and slyly funny, Desiree Reynolds has powerful things to say about race, class, and the struggle between men and women.