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Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange (2009)

by Amanda Smyth(Favorite Author)

3.49 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0307460649 (ISBN13: 9780307460646)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Broadway Books

review 1: There is a disturbing scene early in this novel so readers perhaps need to brace for it.Amanda Smyth has written the classic story of abused power and trust. Through her eyes we see how a girl's psyche may be captured both by force and by seduction. And we see the avoidance of responsibility disguised as blame.This is a deceptively powerful novel. The setting is somewhat exotic, though often breaking into the mundane. The "understory" was not completely predictable and came as something of a surprise, even though one might think that it shouldn't upon reflection.It's nicely written. It felt very much like a very young woman speaking. What was most obvious was the way that her personality was being shaped by what happened to her, and how it was her nature to survive ... morethat.
review 2: I devoured this book in a couple of days. In a lot of respects it's very simliar to a hundred thousand other books out there in plot and so forth, but it's well written and just engrossing. I just dissolved into this world of Trinidad and Tobago (how I imagined it anyway, I've never actually been there) - the scenary, the people, the superstitions... I'm very glad I picked this book up on a bit of a whim, because I'd heard of neither the author nor the book beforehand.Celia comes from Black Rock on Tobago. Her mother is dead and her father lives in England, and she lives with her aunt, twin cousins, and her aunt's scabby second husband. She runs away to Trinidad and ends up working as a nanny/maid for a doctor's family - the mother is English and the doctor is from... was it Guyana? Anyway, during the years on Trinidad she spends it between this family's home and a plantation out in the wilds where her aunt Sula lives.Celia is abused by two men during the story, one she hates, one she loves. They are both serial unfaithful men, although one suffers for it, the other seems to be treated as though he has done nothing wrong. Celia suffers both times. The first is with the aunt's scabby husband, who rapes her - Celia then runs away. She later hears that he was caught raping another young girl and ends up being beaten to death on the beach. She is glad of this. The second is the doctor, who comes and seduces her, initiates all of the rendez-vous. It turns out this affair is just one in a line, which pushes his wife into a nervous breakdown. Word gets around and Celia is shunned, can't get another job in the town, and every one looks down their noses at her. And yet the doctor retains his place in the local community, is treated with respect as if he has done nothing wrong!! And he's the older, experienced man, taking advantage of a young girl who has never known love. That made me so cross. less

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