Greenwichtown: A Novel

By Joyce Palmer and PALMER J

Book Overview

Jamaican writer Joyce Palmer is a first-time novelist who writes with raw talent and true freshness, in a voice that's uncontrived, unselfconscious, and immediate. Her narrator, Fay, sees the world with endearing simplicity and innocence, bearing her trials and mistakes with hope and honesty. Set in Jamaica, Greenwichtown is the story of Fay Myrtle, a young, innocent, eight-year-old girl who lives in a shack outside a Jamaican plantation. An older sister takes her from the village to live in the inner-city ghettos of Greenwichtown, where she lives as her sister's daughter. There she has the chance to go to school and attend church, and her inner life thrives despite abuse by her sister and the squalor and poverty surrounding her. But as she struggles to come of age, searching for love, she gets caught up in a web of betrayal and is devastated by the death of the only man who ever loved her.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312283210
• ISBN13: 9780312283216
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.3" x 0.8" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

A Great Read!!!

I just had to E-mail the author Joyce Palmer and tell her how much I enjoyed the book on so many levels. I had been to Jamaica several times and this book really brought the towns and people to life for me. I could imagine everything that happened to Faye and I felt her pain & despair and later on love & joy. It was a story of finding what was right & true and the unbreakable bond of Mother & child. I have recommended this book to several friends and they all came away with something different. Truly a wonderful story.

Raw,Real,Unforgettable

At time the bleakness of the characters' lives, the poverty, the hopelessness put me in a sorrowful mood. But at the same time, there was triumph as Fay a.k.a. Clara plodded through her miserable conditions in the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica, a town called Greenwichtown. We see how another culture in the Diaspora of Africa struggles with their way of life and families. Faye was given no choice in who would raise her. Her sister, Flo supposedly could provide a better life. Sometimes she did, sometimes she did not. When Flo had a man, life was, if not good, was bearable and there was money for food and school. Faye learned survival skills but she also had a heart to pull herself out of poverty and despair through education.Unfortunately she learned the lessons of the heart by being betrayed by a boy she thought loved her. Was she not worthy of love? Would her dreams be deferred by the disease that seemed to plague every young girl in Greenwichtown?Joyce Palmer has written a compelling, stunningly real view of our Sister's lives in the real Jamaica, not the one we see on the cruises and advertisements. You feel you are there with the patois and the descriptive locations. At times I felt I could see the dirt, feel the despair. I would highly recommend this book

This is a MUST READ book

I could not put this book down.. I became Fay, seeing, tasting and smelling things through her eyes.. I was torn when she was ripped from her mothers home and all that was familiar.. I greived her new life of hunger, poverty, and shame.. and her disappointment of bearing unwanted twins and having the man she loved abandon her to raise fatherless children.. But it is a story of hope and courage as she takes her one opportunity and turns her life on a new course. This book is so full of compassion, and it leaves you feeling so ashamed for ever complaining about a thing. This is an absolute must read...a page turner.. and something that lasts deep within your soul.

Courage is beautiful

This is a story about the women in Jamaica and how they survive. It is told through the eyes of Fay, who is a little girl living in the countryside when her older sister comes to take her to Kingston. Through her Fay's eyes, we see how the people inGreenwichtown live and love and learn. The author tells the story without being maudlin on the one hand or bitter on the other. Once I picked up the book, I couldn't put it down. I read it without stopping. I finished the book, but I still keep thinking about Fay.

Growing up female in Jamaica

"Greenwichtown" by Joyce Palmer is a Jamaican "Angela's Ashes." It is also blessed by female insight. Frank McCourt has his hero a boy coming to terms with poverty and religion and the drag of tradition, but his hero was very much a male with male virtues and vices. The "hero" in "Greenwichtown" is a woman who has to endure the same exterior forces of a society but also the physical and spiritual qualities of being a woman. A woman would have had a different role in Ireland and a man would have had a different life in Jamaica. Palmer stays true to reality and respects her character. This is sensitive and riveting.