Si­mon Lee

With his re­cent nov­el The Re­pen­ters, Kevin Jared Ho­sein has ful­filled some of the promise which won him the Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry Prize in 2015.

He has al­so firm­ly po­si­tioned him­self in the rapid­ly ex­pand­ing co­hort of Caribbean post­mod­ern writ­ers who have over­turned met­ro­pol­i­tan ex­pec­ta­tions of re­gion­al lit­er­a­ture: aban­don­ing the ex­ot­ic for the grotesque; ex­chang­ing the in­dis­creet charms of the bour­geoisie or lush land­scapes, with the grit of the mean streets of sur­vival in an un­hinged, dystopic post­colo­nial so­ci­ety.

Yet for all its moder­ni­ty this dis­tinc­tive­ly Caribbean bil­dungsro­man re­calls the "bar­rack lit­er­a­ture" of the 1930s, with its fo­cus on the ur­ban un­der­class, the main dif­fer­ence be­ing the en­tire­ly au­then­tic Cre­ole voice from be­low, of the pro­tag­o­nist and nar­ra­tor Jor­dan Sant: "It ain't have no cut to heal if the knife nev­er break the skin."

De­spite Jor­dan's protes­ta­tions ("Nev­er re­al­ly care for books be­fore") the shad­ow of the chil­dren's clas­sic The Lit­tle Prince and to a less­er de­gree those of Lord of the Flies and Crime and Pun­ish­ment is dis­cernible through­out the nar­ra­tive of an or­phan's strug­gle to sur­vive in­sti­tu­tion­al life and its af­ter­math, fol­low­ing the hor­rif­ic mur­der of his par­ents.

What dis­tin­guish­es Re­pen­ters from oth­er nar­ra­tives of child­hood trau­ma and abuse, is its un­usu­al or un­like­ly fram­ing in Chris­t­ian faith, which re­calls Pil­grim's Progress. The three sec­tions of the nov­el (Saints, Sin­ners, Re­pen­ters) can be read as an un­holy trip­tych, the tor­ments of an in­no­cent dropped in a swamp of abuse, whose on­ly ap­par­ent sal­va­tion lies on the roads of sin.

But from the be­gin­ning of "the long road with no turn­ing" Jor­dan has faith, heav­i­ly sea­soned with street sense: "Give God a chance with your soul and you will be okay...All bad things come to an end, but not with­out ca­su­al­ties. God don't owe you any­thing be­yond that point. The ones who sur­vive are the peo­ple who God have His eye on. And I could tell you one sure­fire thing. Since the clock tick­ing...God has watched over me." If Mi­larepa, pa­tron saint of Bud­dhist Ti­bet was a mur­der­er be­fore his con­ver­sion and even­tu­al canon­i­sa­tion, why shouldn't Jor­dan Sant al­so be re­deemed?

While the de­bate/con­tro­ver­sy over what de­fines Caribbean writ­ing and writ­ers me­an­ders on, Re­pen­ters side­steps the lo­cal for the uni­ver­sal.

There is lit­tle ref­er­ence to land­scape; we move from the bare en­vi­ron­ment of St As­te­r­ia Or­phan­age to the "gal­vanise waste­land" of Port-of-Spain's Sea Lots shan­ty town and back to St As­te­r­ia.

Trinidad's na­tion­al fes­ti­val, Car­ni­val, gets short shrift from dazed on­look­er Jor­dan: "Cloth, grass and beads, shim­merin un­der the blazin af­ter­noon sun, spread like the wings of a de­formed bird of par­adise. Every­thing movin at the pace of dy­ing earth­worms...what I see mean noth­ing to me."

Ho­sein and his nar­ra­tor Jor­dan's fo­cus is in­ter­nalised, and as read­ers we are in Jor­dan's trou­bled head for the most part.

In the Saints sec­tion, like Jor­dan we ob­serve the in­equity of pow­er re­la­tions be­tween vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren and their sup­posed guardians; their sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion and learned de­prav­i­ty; the cru­el­ty the weak in­flict on those who are even weak­er; the emo­tion­al wilder­ness they in­vol­un­tar­i­ly in­hab­it.

In the Sin­ners sec­tion, Ho­sein in­tro­duces us to the Tar­ran­ti­noesque in­fer­no of drugs, bru­tal sex and vi­o­lence which, like in Mar­lon James's Sev­en Killings, is the con­tem­po­rary Caribbean set­ting which threat­ens to dis­place the more in­nocu­ous or ex­ot­ic ver­sions of beach, sea and rain­for­est. Jor­dan sur­vives the un­re­lent­ing round of rob­bery, mur­der and rape, all of which he is deeply im­pli­cat­ed in, to re­turn to St As­te­r­ia in the fi­nal Re­pen­ters sec­tion, be­cause there's nowhere else to go. Af­ter the har­row­ing read­ing of Sin­ners, (which re­quires a strong stom­ach) Re­pen­ters is in­evitably an­ti-cli­mac­tic and the clo­sure with Jor­dan re­unit­ing with or­phan­age friend Ti-Marie a lit­tle too neat.

Yet in the ab­sence of blood fam­i­ly there is a kind of so­lace when these two or­phans com­mit to car­ing for each oth­er and an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion of those left par­ent­less.

For prodi­gal Jor­dan there is al­so re­demp­tion: "I have my sins, but they is just one side of me...God is watch­ing over me, and I must do my best to pull these chil­dren up from the mire. It isn't just a task. It is a ne­ces­si­ty. It is the way of the world. Some­thin to live for...A cur­ren­cy for my tithes, to re­pay my debts. To heal my wounds."

While con­form­ing to the con­ven­tion­al bil­dungsro­man con­clu­sion where the pro­tag­o­nist ul­ti­mate­ly finds a place in the com­mu­ni­ty, Re­pen­ters shakes up the genre through the worldy-wise fo­cus of Jor­dan, whose voice though it cracks at times, over­rides sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, com­pelling read­ers to con­front the ug­li­ness which is now both a Caribbean and glob­al re­al­i­ty.