The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey

 

Published: 2020, Peepal Tree

Genre: Fiction

Themes: Islands of Central America, legend, ancient tribes, historic legacy

My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤

A thousand years before the story begins, the Mermaid of Black Conch was a young woman living with her tribe on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea.  She had yet to find a husband, and the other women in her village grew jealous of her as the sound of her voice and the sinuous movements of her dancing drew much attention from their men.  These women conspired against her, and using a powerful curse, they turned her into a mermaid doomed to swim in the depths of the oceans for all time.

She remained hidden for hundreds of years, but one day in 1976, drawn to the sound of a local fisherman strumming his guitar, she raised her barnacled, seaweed-clotted head from the sea.  David Baptiste meant her no harm and returned to the same spot day after day to lure her back and gain her trust, but later he came to realise that his patient kindness caused her to let her guard down and allowed her to be caught by American fishermen.  When these tourists landed the mermaid they strung her up on the harbour-front by her great tail, and the only thing that stopped them from killing her was the thought of all the money they could make back home by selling her to a marine theme park.

Aycayia is no fairy-tale mermaid but a muscular sea creature with the body and face of a woman from ancient times.  David Baptiste tells us that she is not pretty, but her eyes gleamed like mercury, and her red skin is tatooed with intricate spiral patterns that look like the sun and the moon.  By the time he discovers her tied upside down in the harbour, night has fallen and the local men are all drinking in the bar, so if he wants to save the mermaid he must act quickly.

Monique Roffey skillfully combines legend and reality with her gritty prose and that adds credibility to the premise of an ancient curse that produced a mythical creature.  The story also examines the right to ownership of both people and places and moral questions are raised throughout the book.  The island of Black Conch was formerly a plantation worked by slaves, and many of the present day inhabitants are decedents of the slaves, so their collective history triggers both sympathy and fear for the fate of the mermaid.  They urge the Americans to put her back in the ocean but the white men are only interested in making money and have almost forgotten they are dealing with a living thing.

This book was the winner of the Costa Book Awards in 2020 and Monique Roffey has drawn on her personal experience of the Caribbean.  She was born in Trinidad, so her use of the local vernacular style of English is accurate and unforced, and adds a greater depth to an arresting story-line.  This is not a cosy read, but it has a powerful and unique story-line that has bought the book the attention it deserves.