The Delicate Beast

November 1, 2024

DEBUT This first novel by Celestin, a Haiti-born scholar of French and comparative literature (emeritus, Univ. of Connecticut), follows an unnamed main character through his childhood, starting in the 1950s in a Caribbean nation referred to only as "the Tropical Republic." In intricate if sometimes florid prose, Celestin introduces a large cast of characters who live in the republic. His descriptions of the paradise are particularly lovely. The boy's life is full of privilege and he lacks for nothing, until a character called "the Mortician" (seemingly inspired by the Haitian dictator Fran�ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier) ruins the Tropical Republic. As the Mortician disrupts the nation's status quo, the boy, his brother, and their parents flee to the United States to save themselves. In the States, the main character feels out of place and must discover who he is away from his homeland. The narrative style is difficult to follow at times, making it hard to sympathize with the characters or comprehend their motivations. The many characters known by titles instead of real names can also be confusing. VERDICT An optional purchase for libraries seeking literary historical fiction about political violence and the Caribbean diaspora.--Kristen Stewart

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 2, 2024
Celestin debuts with an intriguing if muted portrait of an art history professor and his early life in the Caribbean. A prologue set in 1995 Brooklyn sets the stage, as protagonist Robert Carpentier tries to dissuade a fellow partygoer who’s bent on returning to a besieged Sarajevo during the Yugoslav Wars. Robert’s protest is an expression of his own ambivalence toward home. The novel’s lengthy first section chronicles his early years in an unnamed Caribbean republic that “seemed suspended in perpetual peace and stable hierarchy” until 1963, when a doctor dubbed “the Mortician” for his resemblance to an undertaker was elected president. After the Mortician enacts an anti-communist and populist crackdown, an 11-year-old Robert flees with his family to New York City. Later sections cover Robert’s education in Europe in the 1970s, his return to the U.S. in 1980 for the professorship, and his marriage to UNICEF worker Eve. Robert reacts numbly to such catastrophes as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the novel explores the consequences of his emotional guardedness with elegance and ambiguity (“He had allowed no sorrow to touch him, steering recklessly toward a deceptive radiance”). Patient readers will find much to savor.

January 1, 2025
A man reckons with 20th-century tragedies. What does a life reveal when explored from different angles? This sprawling book begins in 1995 at an informal gathering of artists and academics in a Brooklyn brownstone. They're discussing the ongoing civil war in Yugoslavia, and one of the attendees, a man from Sarajevo, says he's going back next week. Robert Carpentier, another guest, asks why he's returning to a place where people are being killed every day. The next step the novel takes is to jump back several decades and adopt a very different register. Here we meet a boy who's studying for his First Communion--presumably the younger Carpentier, though the section that follows mostly avoids using names. He lives in the Tropical Republic, a country run by a politician known here as The Mortician. (Think Haiti under the rule of Fran�ois Duvalier.) The political situation forces the boy's parents to leave the country, with the rest of the family eventually following. Once they're settled in New York City, the novel skips ahead to Carpentier in the 1970s, when he's studying art history in Europe--mainly the paintings of Jean Sim�on Chardin. After some time in Europe, he returns to the U.S., where he finds a job and embarks on a series of relationships before marrying. Civil war in the Balkans isn't the only crisis referenced here; Carpentier and his wife also watch as friends die from AIDS. Eventually the novel returns to the Brooklyn apartment where it began, and we see how the Sarajevo man caused tensions in Carpentier's marriage. It's a stylistically bold look at one man weaving in and out of history, and the subtle effects on his psyche. An investigation of the ways history does and doesn't shape us.

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