JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, July 21, 2025

Hugh Blanc - a unique Caribbean voice

by

20140507

"As in­tense­ly com­pli­cat­ed as we are, on a hu­man lev­el, we are all very sim­i­lar. We all de­sire love, val­i­da­tion, ap­proval, ab­so­lu­tion," says Trinida­di­an au­thor Hugh Blanc. His de­but nov­el, Be­tween Bod­ies Lie, first saw the light of day at the end of 2012.

Be­tween Bod­ies Lie has a unique voice, not of­ten seen in West In­di­an lit­er­a­ture. There's a flavour of post-war Eu­ro­pean ex­is­ten­tial­ism to it, a brood­ing, in­tro­spec­tive look at life through the eyes of a jad­ed, mid­dle-aged writer, who flies to an un­named is­land in the Caribbean to write his lat­est nov­el.

The is­land it­self will cer­tain­ly re­mind us all of a coun­try near and dear to our hearts–trau­mat­ic coup and all–but Blanc de­clines to draw too many par­al­lels be­tween his fic­ti­tious coun­try and our own.

"Apart from not want­i­ng peo­ple to feel they were be­ing mis­rep­re­sent­ed, I didn't want peo­ple to get car­ried away with the thought that I was show­cas­ing Trinidad. The nov­el is about in­di­vid­ual in­ter­ac­tion, re­la­tion­ships, our need for in­ti­ma­cy, and the ways we de­ny our­selves those needs. The for­eign en­vi­ron­ment makes the main char­ac­ter feel more iso­lat­ed. It's more about feel­ings than in­di­vid­ual ac­tions."

The book has been well re­ceived by read­ers and crit­ics alike. Blanc laugh­ing­ly re­mem­bers re­ceiv­ing his first re­view from the well-known Kirkus Re­view. "I went through the whole love-hate, love-hate process, and sent it off, wait­ing for the ju­ry to come back in. I got an e-mail with the re­view at­tached, went out­side, and smoked a cig­a­rette to calm down. I came back in and read what they had writ­ten...and it turned out to be the wrong re­view."

Hap­pi­ly, the cor­rect re­view was ex­cel­lent, re­ceiv­ing a rare star. It went on to make the Best of 2013 list. "That was the val­i­da­tion for me as a writer."

As most lo­cal au­thors do, Blanc faced many bar­ri­ers to get­ting his books placed on the shelf in lo­cal book­stores. Al­so, writ­ers, whether lo­cal or for­eign, ex­pe­ri­enced or new, are fac­ing long wait times when of­fer­ing their books to tra­di­tion­al print pub­lish­ers. Of­ten, even af­ter sev­er­al months have elapsed, the re­sponse is a po­lite "no." This isn't nec­es­sar­i­ly a re­flec­tion of the qual­i­ty of the book, but rather a re­sult of the pro­gres­sive tight­en­ing of the mar­ket. In tough eco­nom­ic times, print pub­lish­ers hedge their bets by fo­cus­ing on well-known, best­selling au­thors, rather than take a huge fi­nan­cial gam­ble on an un­known.

For­tu­nate­ly, the so­lu­tion pre­sent­ed by mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy is self-pub­lish­ing, which pro­vides many op­tions, in­clud­ing print­ed and down­load­able elec­tron­ic books. Blanc chose that op­tion, rather than let his nov­el lan­guish in the "slush pile"–the lim­bo-like waste­land where un­pub­lished books wait for an ed­i­tor to read them.

"The whole in­dus­try is mov­ing that way," he as­serts. "There are neg­a­tives and pos­i­tives. You pay to get your book out there, but you al­so get a high­er prof­it. On the oth­er hand, you don't get the ben­e­fit of the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing and place­ment that a pub­lish­er can give you."

While he thinks it is a great thing that every­one gets to ex­press them­selves, an­oth­er down­side is the sense of drown­ing in the sheer vol­ume of self-pub­lished books. "It's van­i­ty pub­lish­ing. Some­body strings to­geth­er a few sen­tences, they don't un­der­stand the craft, they haven't stud­ied it, and they fig­ure they are a writer. So when some­one puts out a good book, it gets swamped by mediocre ma­te­r­i­al."

And there are two dif­fer­ent kinds of writ­ers: those who are just as com­fort­able pro­mot­ing them­selves and their work as they are writ­ing, and those who pre­fer to sit at their desks, lost in the fan­ta­sy of their own cre­ation. Blanc be­longs to the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry. "I'm not in­to all that mar­ket­ing. It's not that I can't do it, it's that I'm not in­ter­est­ed."

The best writ­ers are al­so com­pul­sive read­ers. "I have many favourites, but Nabokov is my ab­solute one. The way he com­bines the emo­tion­al el­e­ments, and tells a good, lay­ered sto­ry, couched in beau­ti­ful lan­guage..."

Blanc stud­ied film and cre­ative writ­ing at York Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da. "Film was al­ways a big dream for me. My dad and I used to watch a lot of movies, and all of us were big read­ers. I had an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for lit­er­a­ture; I loved sto­ry­telling. But I was more in­ter­est­ed in film. When I played with my ac­tion fig­ures, I would al­ways pic­ture cam­era an­gles. There was al­ways a nar­ra­tive to the ses­sions." Still, he ad­mits, there are things a writer can do in a nov­el that can't be done on film.

De­spite such an artis­tic ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground, his ear­ly ca­reer was very prac­ti­cal and left-brained; he pro­vid­ed lo­gis­ti­cal ser­vices for com­pa­nies in the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

But he's not about to aban­don his cre­ative side. He is col­lab­o­rat­ing on oth­er works, in­clud­ing screen­plays, and has writ­ten free­lance ar­ti­cles for lo­cal pub­li­ca­tions. He has al­so formed a com­pa­ny called i9 Films with a friend, Ja­son de Fre­itas. "The let­ter 'i' stands for in­no­v­a­tive, in­de­pen­dent, imag­i­na­tive," he ex­plains, "And nine is the high­est num­ber you can have, with­out com­pound num­bers."

The com­pa­ny will pro­vide dis­tri­b­u­tion, on­line stream­ing and le­git­i­mate down­load­ing of Caribbean films to a world­wide au­di­ence. He's al­so ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing the idea of pro­duc­ing a film of his own, but at this sen­si­tive phase of the project, he prefers to stay mum on the de­tails.

His fi­nal thoughts on his nov­el are that it is al­most a cau­tion­ary take to him­self. "Porter is some­one I could have be­come, if I'd let a cer­tain side of me take prece­dence." But while Porter is gummed up by his own self-doubt and un­cer­tain­ty, Blanc is dy­nam­ic, pos­i­tive and full of plans for many more cre­ations that are as sure to be just as en­gross­ing, just as haunt­ing.

Be­tween Bod­ies Lie is avail­able for down­load at Ama­zon.com, and has its own page on Face­book.

Ex­cerpt from the Kirkus Re­view of Be­tween Bod­ies Lie

Blanc is supreme­ly sen­si­tive to the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the cre­ative process; he writes with the wis­dom of an es­tab­lished au­thor grown weary of the lit­er­ary scene.

Some read­ers may con­sid­er the de­pic­tion of an emo­tion­al­ly di­sheveled yet un­con­ven­tion­al­ly dash­ing nov­el­ist to be some­what clich�d, but that thought is far out­weighed by Blanc's bril­liant­ly de­tailed study of hu­man con­nec­tions and dis­con­nec­tions, in which even the most in­dis­cernible move­ments of body, mind and heart are painstak­ing­ly recog­nised and chart­ed.

A mas­ter­ful­ly writ­ten ex­plo­ration of the beau­ty and cru­el­ty of love, as sharp as it is sen­su­al.

Read the full re­view at www.kirkus­re­views.com/book-re­views/hm-blanc/be­tween-bod­ies-lie/


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored