The Salt Roads

by Nalo Hopkinson

Book Overview

'The Salt Roads' transports readers across centuries and civilizations as it fearlessly explores the relationships women have with their lovers, their people and the divine. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446533025
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Warner Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Song of Ezili

There are four main characters in THE SALT ROADS, a novel of magic realism. Nalo Hopkinson uses a broken narrative approach to tell their stories, which some readers may find hard to follow.Mer is a healer woman held in slavery on a plantation in late 18th century Saint Domingue, which will someday become Haiti. Jeanne Duval is a dancer and mistress to the writer/critic Charles Beaudelaire in mid-19th France. Thais is half Nubian/half Greek dancing girl/prostitute in late 4th century Alexandria, Egypt; she gives rise to the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt.The fourth character connects the other three together. She is Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean lwa/ancestor spirit/goddess. Ezili has many aspects, but is commonly thought of as the mother ocean goddess and the names and nicknames of the characters reflect this: Mer (sea in French), lemer, Meritat (Thais's Egyptian name given to her by her friend Neferkare). Unbeknownst to the three women, Ezili rides them, that is, she possesses them for reasons that even Ezili doesn't understand. At first, the reader, like the characters doesn't know what is going on, but as the book progresses it becomes clearer.This is a novel of sorrow and celebration, of bondage and liberation, of strength and perseverance. Ezili's siren song sounds both strange and powerful to my ears.

both craft and scope

This "Salt Roads" of this historical/magical realist novel are the trails of sweat, tears, and blood that course through women's lives. Separate narratives intertwine here, each wrought with the precision and lyricism of a short story, but together they produce a true novel of compelling scope. The settings range from Baudelaire's Paris to the cane fields of French-ruled Haiti, from early Christian Alexandria to the present day. The threads of slavery, childbirth, love affairs, and accidental sainthood are by turns comic, angry, and earthily sensual. Rich with historical detail and human intimacies, the book sometimes pulls back to a goddess-like view, contemplating the slow changes that have transformed women's lives over the centuries--but never losing its light, witty touch. In short, a very big novel with many finely crafted and exquisite parts.

bloody brilliant

Complicated, sexy, rewarding. This is a book that stays with you long after you've finished it. This book is so rich! Weaving three different stories together, you'll never tire of any of the point of view characters, but be left wanting more. I wish Salt Roads was twice the length! I wanted to know what happened *after* the revolution. Sequel, please.Nothing Hopkinson has written disappoints. I just wish she wrote faster and edited less. I want a new book every six months!Nothing in this book is deliberately shocking or voyeuristic. Hopkinson simply tells it like it is. The people who call it shocking are saying more about their own limited horizons than this marvellous book.

Lover, virgin, mother

THE SALT ROADS is an engrossing tale of three women who step off of the pages and sit with you as you revel in their triumphs and tremble at their tribulations. In reading this novel, I found that Hopkinson is a writer that uses stiff doses of human emotion and reality to balance out her themes of mythology, fantasy, and religion. THE SALT ROADS is an eccentric read; I truly can say I have never read anything like it. Strongly recommended to those readers who desire a taste of the unknown or an edifying and enlightening experience, THE SALT ROADS is one of the new classics of our generation.Reviewed by CandaceKof The RAWSISTAZ ReviewersComplete review can be found on our website...

fabulous look at Afro-Caribbean mythos

Early in the nineteenth century, on the French colonial Caribbean Island of Saint Domingue, three female slave women, led by Doctress Mer, inter a stillborn baby. During the burial ceremony, they pray to Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean Goddess of love and sex, to "use" the infant's "unused vitality". Mer knows first hand how Ezili resides inside them as the goddess lives within her to use her when needed for that is how she has the healing hands.Ezili employs other female African or Afro descendents as her channel. In the nineteenth century in Paris, Ezili lives inside mixed blooded Jeanne Duval, lover of poet Charles Baudelaire. In the fourth-century Nubian Meritet, changes from a prostitute to the founder of a religion when Ezili enters her. However, even Goddess' have fears that they will expire as Ezili worries will happen to her now that Jeanne' is dying from syphilis. Escape may be through Mer's prays, but at a moment when the Saint Domingue slaves seek freedom at any cost could still endanger the Goddess.Extremely complex in terms of the time paradox, Nalo Hopkinson shows why she is the leading fabulist of Afro-Caribbean mythology, religion, and folk tales filled with Mojo today. The plot spans time and place yet seems so right though readers will struggle with non-linear events (string theory anyone) connected via salt and the Goddess. The three women are fully developed, but surprisingly in a mystical sense so is Ezili. Nalo Hopkinson provides another winner with her insightful look at Afro-Caribbean mythos.Harriet Klausner