Show Me A Mountain

by Kerry Young

Overview

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'Kerry Young is a stand-alone talent in the new emerging generation of writers from the Caribbean region. Her stories are gritty and also funny and very real' - Monique Roffey
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A story of revolution and oppression, privilege and poverty, love and betrayal from the critically acclaimed author of Pao

Fay Wong is caught between worlds. Her father is a Chinese immigrant who conjured a fortune from nothing; her African heritage mother grew up on a plantation and now reigns over their mansion in Lady Musgrave Road.

But her father's Chinatown haunts are out of bounds and the airy rooms of their home are filled with her mother's uncontrollable rages – rages against which Fay rebels as she grows into a headstrong woman.

As she tries to escape the restraints of her privileged upbringing, Fay's eyes are opened to a Jamaica she was never meant to see. And when her mother decides that she must marry the racketeer Yang Pao, she finds herself on a journey that will lead to sacrifice and betrayal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408844342
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	06/30/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	805 KB

About the Author

Kerry Young was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Chinese father and a mother of mixed Chinese–African heritage. She moved to England in 1965 and lives in Leicestershire. Kerry is a reader and mentor for The Literary Consultancy and a tutor for the Arvon Foundation. She is also Honorary Assistant Professor in the School of English at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Leicester. She was writer-in-residence at the University of Sheffield (2014–2016) as a part of the Royal Literary Fund Fellowship programme.

kerryyoung.co.uk
@KerryYoungWrite
Kerry Young was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Chinese father and a mother of mixed Chinese-African heritage. She moved to England in 1965 and lives in Leicestershire. Kerry is a Reader for The Literary Consultancy and a tutor for the Arvon Foundation. She is also Honorary Assistant Professor in the School of English at The University of Nottingham and Honorary Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Leicester. She was writer-in-residence at The University of Sheffield (2014-2016) as a part of the Royal Literary Fund Fellowship Programme.


Kerryyoung.co.uk

Editorial Reviews

"Highly recommended, shocking, complex and riveting historical fiction!" - Historical Novel Review

"Show Me a Mountain cracks open a world many only see as a paradise and would pair well with other recent fiction about Jamaica, like Nicole Dennis-Benn's Here Comes the Sun (2016) and Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014)." - Booklist

"Kerry Young . . . pens an incredibly heart breaking historical fiction. . . A story of losing love and again finding it through an exotic country and learning to forgive the past." - Book Stop Corner

"Kerry Young is a stand-alone talent in the new emerging generation of writers from the Caribbean region. Her stories are gritty and also funny and very real." - Monique Roffey on GLORIA

"Kerry Young tells the absorbing, uplifting story of a young woman’s escape from the brutal poverty of rural Jamaica to a new life in the violent world of its capital, Kingston . . . Written in the gentle, hypnotic patois and encompassing the birth pangs of Jamaican independence, this is a highly evocative portrait of a country in transition, and of one woman’s search for self-awareness and self-respect." - Mail on Sunday on GLORIA

"A vivid portrayal . . . Kerry Young's heartfelt, sparky and affecting debut novel is a chronicle of multicultural Jamaica, both in its cultural richness and in its strife and tensions." - Guardian on PAO

"[An] eye-opening, rambunctious debut . . . Young leads from the heart to celebrate a resilient world that tourists never see. You'll enjoy the view." - Kirkus Reviews on PAO

"Kerry Young brings a little-known slice of Jamaica to vivid life." - National Geographic Traveler on PAO

From the Publisher

★ 01/01/2017
Not a sequel to the Costa Book Award short-listed author's previous works, this novel is instead part of an interlinked trilogy that examines the racial and social dynamics of postcolonial Jamaica via familial, economic, and romantic relationships. Following Pao and Gloria, it explores the experiences of half-black, half-Chinese Fay Wong, who is plagued by an abusive mother and passive father. Her existence is one of privilege; she attends a mostly white Catholic school, and her family, rich by Jamaican standards, lives in a lavish mansion on the exclusive Lady Musgrave Road. When Fay meets Beverley Chung, she begins an important self-exploration, dancing, dating, and learning the history of Jamaican oppression and division. She learns more after her forced marriage to the Chinese Yang Pao, who is part of the criminal underworld. Though the plot is interesting, the novel's characters are what make it a splendid read. Fay plays innocent when she often is not, Beverley is selfish but very kind, and Fay's mother is often brutal yet harbors her own hurt. VERDICT Like Lalita Tademy's Cane River, this novel will appeal to readers of historical and Caribbean fiction.—Ashanti White, Fayetteville, NC

Library Journal

2016-10-05
Fay Wong, a biracial girl caught between the worlds of her Chinese father and her African mother, comes of age in 1930s Jamaica.When 9-year-old Fay is caught visiting one of her father’s opium dens, her mother is furious and beats her. This pattern of violence continues throughout Fay’s childhood. Wearied by the constant physical abuse, Fay finds her only comfort from the family’s maid, Sissy, until Sissy’s departure when Fay is 13. Since Fay’s father refuses to protect her, she eventually comes up with the idea of becoming a boarder at her Catholic high school so she won’t have to return home. Fay is safe and relatively happy for a while, until she falls into a relationship after graduation with a British expat; his return to England just before Fay’s 21st birthday is painful. Then her parents agree to marry her off to Chinese businessman Yang Pao. Stunned, Fay enlists in the British army as an act of independence, only to be forced into unwilling espionage. Young's third novel (Gloria, 2013, etc.) is a unique portrayal of Jamaica in that it doesn't focus only on black and white residents. But despite this potential for complexity, Young can't help falling into stereotypical representations of both Asian men and black women: Fay’s African mother is described as “trying to get comfortable in a seat designed for slender Chinamen, not African women of my mother’s proportions.” In addition, the characters are most often one-dimensional. There are the rich, light-skinned, self-centered private school girls, the clueless father, and the abusive mother. The writing is tremendously detailed—a clear testament to the author’s persistence of vision—but as a whole the novel is plodding and uneven. An ambitious work that unfortunately disappoints.

Kirkus Reviews