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    Here Comes the Sun: A Novel
    Here Comes the Sun: A Novel
    Here Comes the Sun: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Here Comes the Sun: A Novel

    Written by Nicole Dennis-Benn

    Narrated by Bahni Turpin

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis-Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten their village, Margot sees not only an opportunity for her own financial independence but also perhaps a chance to admit a shocking secret: her forbidden love for another woman. As they face the impending destruction of their community, each woman?fighting to balance the burdens she shoulders with the freedom she craves?must confront long-hidden scars. From a much-heralded new writer, Here Comes the Sun offers a dramatic glimpse into a vibrant, passionate world most outsiders see simply as paradise.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJul 19, 2016
    ISBN9781681682716
    Here Comes the Sun: A Novel
    Author

    Nicole Dennis-Benn

    Nicole Dennis-Benn has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Lambda and the Sewanee Writers Conference. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, she lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York, where she teaches writing. In 2018, she was named as an NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction, awarded by the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. Here Comes the Sun is her first novel. It won the Lambda Literary Award, and was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. www.nicoledennisbenn.com

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    Reviews for Here Comes the Sun

    4/5

    144 ratings18 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Heavy! Wish I had more details on the other characters.
    • 5/5
      The language in this novel was so vivid and poetic. It's not a cliche novel that ends in a happy ending. It's an ending that is practical and mirrors real life. The loose ends were tied up perfectly in the last chapter...Wonderfully written!
    • 3/5
       This is well crafted, but it is overwhelmingly depressing. Almost the opposite of a positive feminist agenda, we see a family of women who seem to strive to survive by exploitation. That's exploitation of each other and other women. Margot works at a hotel, and has slept her way into a position of some responsibility. She then moves on to act as a madam for the hotel and provides the tourists (white) with a string of local (black) beauties. There is abuse of various forms, homosexuality is frowned upon and those partaking ostracised. You could argue that these women are only trying to survive by any means possible, taking advantage of the situation they find themselves in. It is grim and depressing, but so well written that I never thought once of stopping. Just don't expect any sign of redemption at the end, there isn't any. Good but I would not describe it as enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      Strong novel that tells it as it is in a resort community in Jamaica. The life of locals like Margot, Thani and their mother Delores tell what it’s really like in paradise. Written using the local dialect we are slapped in the face with the reality of poverty to a family. Delores is a horrible mother who sells her daughter for money. The theme of sex as a commodity is prevalent in this novel, Margot desperately tried to save her younger sister by selling herself in a job at a resort. She sinks into depravity as she is misused by powerful people. Thandi is their hope out of there as she is smart and sent to private school but even as she tries to lighten her skin, she is pulled into her inevitable future by poverty and her family. A powerful novel that shocks one into the truth behind a resort area.
    • 4/5
      This was not an easy read. The first two thirds of the book set up the family and community relationships and drag a bit, while the last third races to the conclusion. The themes surrounding sexual exploitation and sexual violence cannot be avoided and show how multigenerational trauma can become embedded within a family.
    • 5/5
      *gasp* *sob*

      That was glorious. I couldn't put it down, and now I am oh so heartbroken.
    • 4/5
      Warning: the sun is not a thing you want to arrive in this book.

      Really good, but definitely a brutal read.
    • 3/5
      Another depressing read! Despite the strong characterisation and vividly described setting, I just couldn't muster enough interest in the story, which took an age to get through. Dolores and her two teenage daughters, Margot and Thandi, are facing the destruction of their poor village in Jamaica, with plans for a new tourist hotel right on their doorstep. Both Dolores and Margot have burdened the youngest daughter, Thandi, with their hopes for the future, sending her to a good school and forcing her to give up art for science. Margot is selling herself and other girls at the hotel where she works in Montego Bay to pay for her sister's schooling, trying to keep her safe from Dolores and the same mercenary betrayal that she faced at a younger age. But while sleeping with the boss to get a promotion, Margot yearns for the company of Verdene, the neighbourhood 'witch', shunned and punished for once being caught with a woman. Nearly every woman in the story has been raped by a man, usually while underage, yet even the hint of a same sex relationship is punished with biblical wrath! Jamaica, what a place!The tropical heat and torpor of daily life in Jamaica are almost tangible in Nicole Dennis-Benn's writing, and I really felt for poor Thandi, trying to bleach her skin so that men will find her attractive, but the level of poverty for these women - living in a shack and selling themselves and each other for a ticket out of 'paradise' - just depressed me beyond words. And the ending doesn't even offer any resolution - we learn what happens to Margot, but not Thandi, whose outcome I was most invested in.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars. Listened on audio (through Hoopla).Tourists see the shiny, luxurious side of Montego Bay, Jamaica. But what about the people who live there? The craftspeople selling in the markets, the fishermen, taxi drivers, street kids, schoolkids, resort employees, prostitutes? This is where Dennis-Benn focuses her story. The resorts lining the bay take the land and only provide mediocre service jobs to the local black population. Even within the black population, skin color is everything--the lighter girls are the popular ones at school, the darker girls are seen as not having much of a future. In this novel Dennis-Benn looks at half-sisters Margot and Thandi, and their mother Dolores. Dolores has been selling tourists goods in the market for decades--and she is good at it, but it's hard. They live in a tin-roofed shack (though it sounds like a small tin-roofed house). At the age of 14, Margot was introduced to the life of prostitution, and she has spent the 14 or so years since doing everything to save her sister Thandi from the same fate. She has worked hard, running the girls behind the scenes at a resort, keeping Thandi in school and in school uniforms, and dressing the part of her job. She is her boss's side piece--but she herself is trying to find a way out of Riverbank, where she and her girlfriend Verdine do not need to hide their relationship. Her deep desire to leave Riverbank for a place she can be herself, and to send Thandi to college results in Margot making decisions her family and friends do not approve of as she aims for a general manager job at a new resort--but the new resort will destroy Riverbank forever.———There is a lot going on in this book. We have Margot's work storyline, Margot's history storyline, Thandi's school storyline, Dolores' history storyline, Margot's romance with Verdine, Verdine's history storyline and her present as others don't like her for being a lesbian and having an English accent, and Thandi's romance storyline. Dennis-Benn manages to weave all these stories together so it's coherent and different pieces fill in what otherwise might be plot holes. But I struggled to picture the scenes in Riverbank--are the taxis the only cars? What do they look like? Are the roads paved? What are the distances people are walking? I normally make a movie in my head when I'm reading/listening, and I struggled with this one. I've never been to Jamaica or anywhere in the Caribbean and couldn't fill it in. Also, too much romance for me--there are two different romance lines in this book. One LGBTQ, one cis.
    • 4/5
      While not exactly uplifting, I really enjoyed the sense of geography that Dennis-Benn conveyed via phonetical dialect and long, descriptive passages. All of the protagonists are women, the men mostly tangential (or consequential), and there was a long-running theme of examining race and how it's internalized.
    • 4/5
      I read this one for my lesbian book group. At first I wasn't sure I liked the book, I think because I was expecting a Lesbian Novel, instead of what this is, which is a novel with lesbians in it (really a better thing).It's the story of a family of three women. The mother Delores and the older sister Margot, are working and sacrificing to send the younger sister to school so she can become a doctor and rescue the family from poverty. The younger sister, Thandi, really wants to be an artist, which of course is not understood.All three women have unpleasant sides, and make some pretty questionable decisions in their quest to escape poverty. It was hard to like Margot, but also hard not to admire her tenacity.The book gives a detailed picture of life in Jamaica, and the issues surrounding tourism and it's effects on the community.
    • 4/5
      This title & cover art may be misleading to some. It's hard not to look at the cover of this book & hear those musical lyrics in your head, picturing beautiful Jamaican beaches & vacation resorts. But that's not what this book is about. This is about the darker side of Jamaica, where real people live and survive, manipulate and sacrifice in order to make a living. The story evolves around a mother (Delores) and her two daughters (Margot & Thandi). Delores is a bitter, older (middle aged) woman who works the tourist stalls. Margot is an almost-surrogate mother to Thandi (15 years her junior), working in order to one day send Thandi to medical school & a better life. Thandi, a teenager, is beginning to discover herself but struggles to fit in with either the people of her hometown or the more uppity peers at her private school. This story is multi-layered. It examines underlying racial tension, political gain, prostitution, homosexuality & perhaps an alternate but realistic view of family dynamics in a poor country. However, these themes are woven effectively & the novel does indeed pack a punch. Though some of the content may be somewhat disturbing, it is well written. I found the Jamaican dialect effective, although I do think that reading it on audio, as I did, would make for a somewhat easier read. The reader, Bahni Turpin, captured this dialect flawlessly and did an excellent job. The ending of the story snuck up on me, and while it left me a little unsettled, I would certainly recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      “Like the old mattress, Thandi is that source in which they plant their dreams and expectations. “It’s you who’ll get us outta dis place,” they say to her. She hears Delores telling her friends this too when they come over to play dominoes. No one knows how crushing the weight of Thandi’s guilt is when they excuse her from cooking, cleaning, and even church because of the importance they place on her studies.” (58)River Bank, Jamaica, is a small town worlds away – despite its close proximity – from the five star hotels and pristine beaches frequented by international tourists. It is also home to a family of indomitable women, all volleying for a future that might include some degree of contentment and independence. Delores, mother of Margot and Thandi, is a cunning trinkets peddlar who has managed to feed her family on her wiles and wits for years. But in spite of her best efforts, the family still lives in a shack. She is determined that her youngest daughter, Thandi, will have a better life – and will go to any length to secure this future for Thandi. Margo, Thandi’s oldest sister by more than ten years, is also desperate to protect her sibling. Margot works at a resort where she is a desk clerk by day and – having learned from her mother at an early age to trade sexuality for survival – prostitute to wealthy male tourists by night. Thandi, not surprisingly, is impossibly burdened by the weight of her family’s expectations. She, too, wishes to be her own person, whether by abandoning her academic studies to pursue art, by dating a local boy, or by bleaching her skin that she might better fit the local standard of “beauty.”The women’s lives, burdened as they are by betrayal, lust, and ambition – are further aggravated by external forces threatening to destroy their community: a severe drought and a developer’s plans for a new hotel which would force many locals from their homes. The enormous social inequality and despicable imbalance of power between Jamaicans and hoteliers is driven home by Dennis-Benn: "In the past, developers would wait for landslides and other natural disasters to do their dirty work. But when tourism became the bread and butter for the island's economy, the developers on the government alike became ravenous, indifferent. In retaliation, the people stole concrete blocks and cement and zinc from the new developments to rebuild homes in other places, but their pilfering brought soldiers with rifles and tear gas. Developers won the fight, and the people scattered like roaches ... It was as though their own land had turned on them -- swallowed up their homes and livestock and produce and spat out the remains." (120)Here Comes the Sun is a stunning debut novel – one of those that makes me wonder how on earth such a work is a debut! Other of the novel’s themes include race and sexuality – specifically, the local taboo of homosexual relationships. A must read for those who enjoy literary fiction and strong female characters – and are interested in reading about the impenetrable socioeconomic divide which exists in such countries as Jamaica where locals struggle to survive while visitors flock to their turquoise beaches for a piece of “paradise.” Highly, highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      A debut novel by Jamaican author Nicole Dennis-Benn (currently lives in New York) about a family of women living in Jamaica, trying to survive. The main narrator is Margot but there is also her mother Delores'story as well as the younger sister, Thandi. The book not only looks at what it is like to be poor and woman but also 'colorism' and 'classism'. This book will make you see the people who are existing behind the tourism. The book also takes on issues of exploitation, sexuality and gender. This book shows how generational abuses continue in families. The difficulty in reading the book is not the topic but the use of patois (dialect of the island people). It might be better to listen to this one that read it.The made up words of colorism and classism come from comments on the back by Chinelo Okparanta, author of Under the Udala Trees.
    • 4/5
      Brutal, but gripping.
    • 4/5
      [Here Comes the Sun] is a powerful novel. I will never think of tourism in the same way again. I've never been to Jamaica, but it sounds like paradise -- and perhaps it is to tourists and to the rich. Dennis-Benn tells the story of the lives of people who sell trinkets -- and themselves -- to the tourists. Margot, the protagonist, works in a hotel and prostitutes herself so she can pay her sister's school fees. Her hopes for a better life lie with her sister Thandi. The people who work in the hotels go home at night "to their shabby neighborhoods, away from the fantasy they help create about a country where they are as important as washed-up seaweed."But this complex novel is not just about class; Dennis-Benn also takes on gender and sexuality and race. Thandi spends her money on products to lighten her skin so that she will be accepted by others in the private school she attends. And if the poor are treated like dirt, women are the ones who really suffer. Husbands and fathers leave, forcing the women to support the families. There is no solidarity among the women, however. Verdene, a lesbian, is brutalized by her neighbors, scapegoated because they can't do anything to fight the hotel owners who deny them access to running water, electricity, or the country's beautiful beaches. The owners gobble up land for hotels and evict the people living there. This isn't a polemic though. Dennis-Benn breathes life into Margot, Thandi and Dolores, and makes us want to see them triumph.One challenge reading this was the patois. Most of the characters speak in it; I'd like to listen to this. Sometimes just seeing the words on the page made it hard to read.Overall, though, a very accomplished first novel.
    • 4/5
      There's a great deal of trouble in paradise. Jamaica is portrayed by the author as two disturbed sides of a coin: the oppression by wealthy whites and the misery inflicted on poor residents by their own self-appointed arbiters of "family values". Mother Delores sold daughter Margot for cash, and she has continued inflicting the cruelty by becoming a pimp. Younger daughter Thandi is the "good girl", studious and quiet, but her own high expectations include bleaching her skin to a false lightness because "God nuh like ugly". This is a cruel environment and, with very few redeeming characters, a Caribbean version of hell, including venal real estate developers, as if poverty wasn't enough.
    • 4/5
      In Jamaica, you either have or have not. Margot comes from a family of have-nots but has big plans for her and her sister to have. To have a fancy job, a good education, a big house. Some of that happens, but not in the way you'd expect. Brings up interesting implications for class, race, etc.