The word has gone out that Seduce is dead, and the mourners gather for her wake. But if Seduce is in her coffin, her memories and consciousness of those around her persist.
There are those like Hyacinth who have come to make sure 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 but fears for the rescue of her mother’s soul; her grandchildren, Son and Loo, both in their different ways marked by their upbringing in this dysfunctional home, searching to find something positive in Seduce’s life for themselves; and there is her old lover, Mikey, come to make his peace.
Set on the mythical Church Island in the Caribbean, respectable 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.