Red Island House by Andrea Lee

A black American woman professor marries an Italian business man and they build a vacation hotel on an island off the coast of Madagascar Africa. They spend part of the year at this house where they entertain guests, vacationers, as well as family members. They develop a relationship with the staff of the Red Island House. The reader becomes acquainted with many of these people including the various activities that go on not only at the hotel but on the island. This includes prostitution of young girls with older men and a very busy night club scene.

Before I go further, I must admit that had I not been reading this book for a book club, I would have backed out and probably would not have finished the book. Not only did I find much of the plot not interesting and repetitive but I found the vocabulary annoying in that I did not know the meaning of various words and I had to tap my Kindle to bring up the meaning, although I might have guessed them by the context (I will give examples later on).

Basically, the book follows the two main protagonists husband Senna and wife Shay (for some reason I thought their names should have been switched) throughout their life time and while I might not identify with their life experience, I did appreciate how the aging process was depicted. In my opinion. Th e most emotionally moving part of the book was where Bertine, one of the senior staff who has known the owners for many years passes away. The impact on Shay and her reminisces was very well done .

I thought any reader of this review might find it interesting to see a sampling of the words I had to look up and how I probably could guess the meaning of some of them from the context:

Maputo- unbelievable Maputo moves
manioc – manioc patches
tsingy grin – tsingy grin at the sky
pinon-watching snow melt on a pinon
memsahib- how a proper memsahib does things
palimpsest- palimpsest of tribal conflicts
crepuscular- directed towards a crepuscular lost dimension of history
bourn – a bourn has been crossed
moraingy- prostitutes moraingy boxers
louche- from the louche life which he was torn
schusses – schusses of the truck
congeries – congeries of discolored huts
lapidary – lapidary prose style
gibe- a word used as a gibe
salegy – a popular salegy trio
vazaha – a vazaha can’t understand
lambas – a woman’s lambas like flag