WINDWARD HEIGHTS by Maryse Condé

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

“…l’Engoulvent, an overseer's house almost in ruins at Grand-Fonds-les-Mangles, situated on the Windward Heights. It was called l'Engoulvent because the winds seemed to rush in from the horizon, sweeping over the limestone bluffs, the columnar cactus and the heath. You could tell the force of the wind by the way the bent trees grew, stunted and shrivelled like old folk. When there was a hurricane or simply a storm or tropical depression, it was as if hundreds of wild horses had been let loose in a howling stampede. The sea came over from La Désirade, swelled up and flooded the Heights.”

TITLE—Windward Heights

AUTHOR—Maryse Condé

PUBLISHED—1995 (English trans. 1998)

PUBLISHER—Soho Press (orig. French ed. Editions Robert Laffont; orig. English trans. Faber & Faber Limited)

GENRE—literary gothic fiction—Wuthering Heights retelling

SETTING—post-emancipation Havana, Guadeloupe, & the surrounding islands & sea

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Caribbean folklore, US imperialist projects, colorism, Romantic & Gothic literature writing style, imagery, & tropes, love & obsession, parenthood across different class & social situations, individual agency & obligation, familial bonds, cycles of violence, inherited trauma, hurricane, slavery & colonialism in the Caribbean, Creole dialects, borders & divisions, poverty

“Under her feet the century-old floorboards creaked. At night the old house groaned and shook and resonated with all the sounds of its secrets locked in its dressers and cupboards. Rapes, murders and theft of all sorts. Sometimes it would wail like a widow or a maman separated from her infants. Sometimes it jabbered like a madwoman.”

Blurbs:

“Read Windward Heights. Be struck in awe. Witness a god’s creation take giant strides through your sacred moor as it moves to create and inhabit new ground… If Wuthering Heights is the wind’s dull roar Windward Heights is the source.” — Akilah White (2019)

My thoughts:

Wow. What a gut-punch of a story. I loved how half the story was told from all the different perspectives of the lower class characters in & around the main characters. Their vision of their world & the character & choices of the de Linsseuils & the l’Engoulvent clan was such a fascinating way to view the drama enfolding within the lives of these two families.

The characters themselves were almost too complex for the kind of gothic tragic romance style story that Condé’s work was a retelling of… they felt too painfully real even in all their exaggerated manners & emotions. Wuthering Heights has always been a favorite of mine, & I have always felt a lot of sympathy for all of the characters, but I don’t know that my heart so utterly shattered for them in the same way it did for Condé’s characters.

Another element of this work that I feel Condé did very successfully was to echo the tradition of gothic romance’s descriptions of the landscape in ways that not only evoke visceral emotional reactions from the reader but personifies the landscape into a character of its own, interacting with the action of the story in a manner inseparable from the world of the larger drama. Particularly in a story that takes place on a Caribbean island where the landscape defines so much of the history & culture of the people who make it their home, you could easily find yourself thinking the genre itself could only have been invented in such a place.

“What is love? A bonfire of fluttering leaves that you light in the evening and in the morning is nothing more than a heap of ashes. That's it; that's it exactly. A catch, a zatrap. That's it; that's it exactly. You go to bed with a burning heart. You get up with both feet as cold as an old bag of bones. Only the departed remain handsome and desired forever.”

I would recommend this book to readers who like classic gothic literature &/or retellings of classics, or just really angsty, gothic, epic literary historical fiction. This book is best read rural or beachside Caribbean, near an old cemetery or the ruins of a 19th c. manse.

Final note: Retellings are my favoriteee & I think this book is the best retelling of a work of classic literature that I have read so far as it reimagines every aspect of the original story, including its themes, imagery & style, beyond just the characters &/or plot.

“Have you thought of the life I'm going to lead once you're gone? Have you seen people live without their soul?”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

CW // lots—racism (n-word), rape, child abuse, graphic illness & death (tuberculosis)

Season: dry hot summer

Music pairing: not super related to the subject matter of the book but I listened to a lot of Spanish & slack-key guitar while reading it & it was pretty perfect for it so… fwiw

Further Reading—

• Akilah White’s 2019 review: “A Caribbean giant”

• WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë—Akilah: “Reading Wuthering Heights was worth it if only to see how Condé expanded on it, magnificently.”

• WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys

  • Read my review for WIDE SARGASSO SEA here.

• I, TITUBA by Maryse Condé

  • Read my review for I, TITUBA here.

• ON A WOMAN’S MADNESS by Astrid Roemer

  • Read my review for ON A WOMAN’S MADNESS here.

• MY BROTHER by Jamaica Kincaid

  • Read my review for MY BROTHER here.

• BOY SNOW BIRD by Helen Oyeyemi

  • Read my review for BOY SNOW BIRD here.

• THE GRASS DANCER by Mona Susan Power

  • Read my review for THE GRASS DANCER here.

• JAMES by Percival Everett—TBR

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