Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home - Hardcover

Cambridge, Joan

3.78

9 ratings by Goodreads

9780899194035: Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0899194036 ISBN 13: 9780899194035

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987

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hardcover with dust jacket

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From Publishers Weekly:

The home Clarise longs for is in Guyana, which is also the domicile of first novelist Cambridge, widow of novelist and actor Julian Mayfield. Clarise has left her children there to come to New York City in search of her husband Harold, who fled their village with his "sweet-woman." Clarise is single-minded in her devotion to Harold and in her attachment to the dreams his leaving shattered. Staying in an apartment with her old friend Mavis, whose green card she borrows, Clarise conducts her hunt for both job and husband as though she were back in the country. She talks to people on park benches, subways, buses and street corners, quickly distributing the 100 pictures of Harold she's had printed. Cambridge offers high humor in the clash between Clarise's old values and those that keep Manhattan going, but the laughs are edged with sadness. Clarise, with all her indomitable spirit, gumption and resourcefulness, can't find a man who doesn't want to be found, nor remain forever untouched by city grime. Cambridge tells Clarise's story in the lilting cadences of their homeland, so that reading this novel is a little like reading a song. It's a tuneful tale that stays in the mind.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Cambridge's first novel, a narrative in Guyanese dialect, presents an engaging naif whose search for her husband takes her from rural Guyana to New York City, where she encounters indifference, prejudice, and violence. An illegal alien in a hostile environment, Clarise prevails because of strong spirit and traditional values. Though Clarise's observations are often humorous, the story Cambridge tells so effectively through strong characterization and oral narrative is ultimately an indictment of American society. The dialect is sometimes hard to follow, the action is episodic, and the story does perpetuate stereotypes, but this novel by and about a Guyanese woman provides us with fresh insight. For larger, or international, collections of fiction. Elizabeth Guiney Sandvick, English Dept., North Hennepin Community Coll., Minnesota
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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