I loved this book. What a great contribution to Caribbean literature! Pleasantview is essential reading for Trinidadians, and a raw, honest, and unfiltered entry point for non-Trinidadians interested in learning more about the hard realities of life in the Caribbean. I am truly impressed by the level of detail Celeste Mohammed managed to weave throughout Pleasantview. Every phrase, joke, character description, race, religion, social dynamic, mentality, and environment is exactly on point. I related to every single character and story in Pleasantview, either because I had similar experiences and observations growing up in Trinidad, or because I knew people who did. Politics. Immigration. Marriage and infidelity. Childhood and parenthood. Turtle watching and poaching. KFC and Crix. Killing a cockroach. It’s all here. Nothing is too insignificant. Throughout this book I found myself totally gripped and emotionally invested. On one page I would shake my head and lament the tragedies of crime, gang violence, sexual violence, and corruption in Trinidad, and then on the next page find myself laughing out loud at the exquisite sense of humor that no other culture comes close to replicating.
The structure of Pleasantview was also a real treat. Mohammed’s decision to present her creation as “a novel in stories” was wonderful. Every chapter can read as a stand-alone short story, but there is also a larger narrative and thematic arc that carries through many of the stories. The recurring characters and locations are just perfectly placed and portioned to balance a cohesive constructed world with Mohammed’s effort to spotlight Trinidadian life from as many angles as she could.
My only real complaint here is that I wanted even more. So many characters arcs were left open-ended, and while I understand that was intentional, and that it’s partially up to the reader to fill in the blanks, I think it was a missed opportunity for Mohammed to really flesh this work out. This could easily have been a 500-page novel and I would have devoured every page.
The Once and Future Lit 