Reviewed on Richard & Judy on Wednesday 23 July 2008.
An adventure-cum-love story well balanced between narrative, description and comment with an intriguing tale bound round the history of Jamaica. It is about the illegitimate daughter of Errol Flynn so laced with glamour and some real character appearances (Noel Coward, Princess Margaret). The story follows three generations of women in one family from the early 1940s to the present but particularly in the era leading up to Jamaica’s independence. It uses the historical events as its framework in a compulsive, fascinating read with lots of colour. It is lovely.
An unforgettable story of love and adventure, spanning three decades of Jamaican history.
Jamaica, 1946. Errol Flynn washes up on in the Zaca, his storm-wrecked yacht. Ida Joseph, the teenaged daughter of Port Antonio's Justice of the Peace, is intrigued to learn that the 'World's Handsomest Man' is on the island, and makes it her business to meet him. For the jaded swashbuckler, Jamaica is a tropical paradise that Ida, unfazed by his celebrity, seems to share. Soon Flynn has made a home for himself on Navy Island, where he entertains the cream of Hollywood at parties that become a byword for decadence - and Ida has set her heart on marrying this charismatic older man who has singled her out for his attention. Flynn and Ida do not marry, but Ida bears Flynn a daughter, May, who will meet her father but once. The Pirate's Daughter is a tale of passion and recklessness, of two generations of women and their battles for love and survivial, and of a nation struggling to rise to the challenge of hard-won independence.
Margaret Cezair-Thompson was born and raised in Jamaica, West Indies. Her first novel, the acclaimed The True History of Paradise, was published in 1999, and was shortlisted for the IMPAC Award. She is professor of English at Wellesley College, and lives in Massachusetts.
