Here Comes the Sun
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
Nicole Dennis-Benn's first novel is set in a Jamaican village near Montego Bay, where Margot works at an expensive resort and sends most of what she earns toward her younger sister Thandi's schooling. As a girl, Margot was taught to use her sexuality as a means of survival, and she is fiercely determined that Thandi will not be pushed toward the same arrangement.
Plans for a new hotel then reach the village, and the news carries two meanings for Margot at once. It threatens the community where her family lives, and it also suggests a route toward financial independence of her own. It may open room for something she has never said aloud, her love for another woman, which the people around her would not accept.
The book moves among several women in one family, each balancing what she owes to others against what she wants for herself, and each holding injuries she has kept private. Dennis-Benn writes Jamaican speech rhythms into the narration and places ordinary working life beside the beaches and turquoise water that visitors arrive to see. The distance between those two versions of one coastline shapes much of the story.
