Augustown review: Kei Miller
This powerful novel keeps returning to the historical Jamaican figure of Alexander Bedward, the "flying preacherman", who in 1920 climbed a breadfruit tree in August Town wearing a bedsheet and attempted to fly home to Africa, succeeding only in breaking both legs.
In Kei Miller's novel, this tale is transformed into an allegory of faith and liberation, as well as an implicit comment on the act of storytelling and its importance to everyone. In 1982 when this novel is mainly set, the blind matriarch Ma Taffy feels trouble coming in the air.
The simmering tension between black street gangs and white authorities has long been there, but when a boy comes home crying because an angry teacher has shorn off his dreadlocks, the stakes are raised. Miller toggles effortlessly between the demotic speech of his characters and his own poetic style.
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