Book of the Month: Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange, by Amanda Smyth

From its first page, Amanda Smyth's compelling debut novel, Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange, wraps readers in the sensual riches and lilting rhythms of Caribbean island life. In this case, the island is Tobago, and Smyth lovingly evokes the place, with its frangipani and lime trees, breadfruit trees whose "leaves were thick and hard like plastic," beaches strewn with "shells and pieces of driftwood thrown up like old bones," mangrove trees, blue crabs, and sea grape trees.

The book's protagonist is an intelligent and restless teenage girl named Celia, who feels adrift in this place. Raised by her aunt and uncle, Celia dreams of one day journeying to England to meet the father she has never known. Eventually Celia does escape to the bigger and more populous island of Trinidad, where she settles in the bustling capital, Port of Spain, working for the household of a doctor from England.

Before leaving Tobago, Celia is told by the local soothsayer, "Men will want you like they want a glass of rum. One man will love you. But you won't love him. You will destroy his life. The one you love will break your heart in two." On Trinidad the truth of these prophecies slowly unfolds, and in this unfurling, Smyth demonstrates that she is equally adept at evoking the character and pace of island life, its mix of sun-beaten indolence and simmering violence, catch-as-catch-can employment and postcard-prettified dreams, and the uneasy racial roles that still move, even in the middle of the 20th century, to the ghostly tune of colonial times.

As the tale moves with inexorable power towards its startling conclusion, Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange cultivates the poignancy of Caribbean island life to almost unbearably luxuriant bloom.