What We’re Reading: The Last Warner Woman
The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller (Coffee House Press, 2010)
Kei Miller’s novel The Last Warner Woman is a completely absorbing story, full of the mysterious, religious fervor, powerful haunted/ing women, and tragedy. The novel is told by two different narrators; that of the “Mr. Writer Man”, and that of his subject, The Warner Woman, also known as Adamine Bustamante. Both voices are necessary to hear this story, to hear their conflicting story lines battling for the truth. However, through these two, we find that truth via fact isn’t always the full truth. Adamine’s story is woven with unanswered questions, emotionally complicated situations and decisions, and cloudy definitions of right and wrong.
We follow Adamine’s journey from her birth (and her mother’s death) in the last leper colony in Jamaica, where she is born unknowingly into her mother’s lost destiny. When she runs away from the leper colony, she discovers her life as a Warner Woman with the Revival church. With the somewhat awful gift of Warning, she sees earthquakes and floods about to happen, she has to cut away demons from sick children, trembles with the power of God. People revere her, and fear her in Jamaica. When she moves to England, however, her sanity is doubted. The unknown Mr. Writer Man has tracked her down years later, desperate to pull her out of her institutionalized silence and learn her story. This is their joint journey into understanding her experiences, and with it, the pain of living.
However, while Adamine’s story is hard, and heavy, reading this novel made me feel more alive, the pages tingling with vibrancy and urgency. The narrators are perfect, and the story provides humor and everyday life along with the unbelievable and mysterious. It’s an addicting, completely engrossing read. Adamine’s voice especially pulls you in deep and holds you there, in the middle of her complicated, somewhat mysterious web. Miller uses innovative writerly tactics to enhance that feeling, with Adamine’s portion of the story told as an “installment of a testimony spoken to the wind”, of which there are many. Each one is a riptide of emotional overload, hearing Adamine’s tragic and difficult story from her own impressive dialect.
Another aspect of the novel that I loved was how much time Miller devotes to each character, divulging enough so we understand who each of these characters are in their individual stories, in addition to their roles in Adamine’s story. I am partial to books that go into depth with each character, and especially appreciate when authors such as Miller can achieve this by creating an intense amount of intimate depth in not so many words. Many of these characters are women; Adamine’s mother who dies giving birth to Adamine, Mother Lazarus who raises Adamine in the leper colony, and more. They are the core of the novel, and through it, we see injustices done to them, and their own complex actions.
Kei Miller was born in Kingston Jamaica, and is the author of The Same Earth, and Fear of Stones, and also writes poetry.
Which powerful literary women characters have stuck with you after finishing reading their story? Is there a novel you’re thinking of that resembles this murky journey to discover the truth?
It officially feels like summer to me: I’ve been able to consistently bike to work, my skin tone is slowly but surely turning from ghostly translucence to a mild tan, and I’ve grilled at least twice this week. With a holiday weekend coming up in just a few weeks, I’ve been searching my bookcases and local bookstores for some goodies to stash in my suitcase that is headed up with me to the family cabin on Pine Lake. Here is my list. Now what’s yours?
Gryphon: New and Selected Stories by Charles Baxter (Pantheon Books, 2011): This book of short stories will be for those days on the dock, reading between jumps into the (OK, still somewhat cold) lake. I’ve already worked my way through a handful and found them rich (albeit, a bit lonely). A self-described “Midwestern writer in a postmodern age,” many of Baxter’s characters show twinges of teeming depths behind their reserved, Midwestern-esque facade.
The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller (Coffee House Press, 2012): If you haven’t already been able to deduce as much, I am in love with Coffee House Press. (This is a book that you will all find in another What We’re Reading post soon, FYI.) Adamine Bustamante is a woman fighting for her personal story. Born in a Jamaican leper colony, Bustamante has the gift of “warning,” but this gift is distorted as insanity when she moves to England. I’ve been giddily anticipating digging into this novel, and this will be my “meaty” book that I am most looking forward to.
The Princess Bride by William Goldman (Ballantine, 1973): This is because I firmly believe that summer is the perfect time to revisit a classic (as in, something that you’ve read so many times the spine is falling apart). And come on, who doesn’t love this book? Hazel introduced me to it when I was in elementary school. My immediate and steadfast love for the novel is obvious with my name written in a magenta gel pen in loopy elementary school handwriting branded on the first page. Buttercup and Westley’s undying love, their adventures through Guilder trying to find their way to each other, and the host of hilarious, rich characters, including the Sicilian con-man Vizzini (“In-con-theiv-able!” is still among my favorite parts in the movie adaptation), the kind giant Fezzik, the Spaniard Inigo who is out to avenge his father’s death, and many more.
What books will you spend the holiday, and/or summer digesting? Or, which books are you most looking forward to reading in the near future?
