After around two months break, I was finally able to return to the world of Maryse Condé. La Belle Créole is a social story, a tragic passion story taking place during times of social change.
Dieudonné is accused of murdering Lorraine, a rich lady for whom he worked as a gardener. Manipulative, emotionally and psychologically instable and much older Lorraine used him, and wants to get rid of his presence, but he may reach violently killing her. He is becoming a kind of local celebrity, for all the wrong reasons, and he will return to freedom, but the life he is back to is an empty, lonely, full of remords life. Not worth living it.
I love social stories, or novels with a strong social dimension, but I am often afraid to discover that some may just be strongly biased accounts trying to convince the reader without being based on a narrative of sorts. In this case, everything come admirably perfectly together: the characters, the story, the context. Both events and the characters do grow up in sync, developing under each other´s influence.
Especially Dieudonné, the main character, is portrayed in his psychological complexity, put into the specific social context he grew up, experiencing the social alienation and relationships, interacting with people involved at different degrees in the social experiment. The social environment, its cruelty particularly, is experienced through the daily interactions and the personalities of the main characters. It is the background against which the story unfolds, allowing however the own stories of the characters to take shape.
I´ve read the book in the original French language, rich in local expressions, which makes the book even more authentic. I was very fond of this book and would continue discovering Condé´s work both for the style and writing, as well as for the social relevance.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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