The novel avoids the maudlin of some coming-of-age stories, and the magnetic descriptions of the father-and-son conversations and encounters and the Jamaican landscape add to the narrative….Like Marcus J. Guillory’s Red, Now, and Laters, this book will appeal to lovers of Caribbean fiction, but all readers of relationship novels are sure to enjoy.
–Library Journal, Starred review Shortlisted for the Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, part of Jamaica’s Lignum Vitae Awards
Ellis writes with an easy grace, and his novel should find favor with readers who are interested in exploring world fiction.
–Booklist
A fast-paced story of father and son, packed with misadventures and set against the backdrop of contemporary Jamaica….Ellis sets his story in 2008 Jamaica, where old people are burnt in their homes for no reason at all; stubborn old men are slaughtered by gunmen –where it is so easy to get away with murder. This milieu adds a great deal of tension….Well-constructed….Admirable.
–Kirkus Reviews
Ellis…has an exquisitely unique writing voice and the world should not be without it. Nowhere is this more clear than in reading Ellis’s latest offering, The Angels’ Share….[The novel] is a deeply moving meditation on regret–and the hope for redemption.
–Toronto Star
The Angels’ Share is storytelling at its best….Imaginative and insightful, The Angels’ Share beckons us to look deeper, beyond the personas and the camouflage lives we construct.
–Jamaica Gleaner
It’s a novel about how children can never really know their parents, about the unique and often strange relationship between fathers and sons, about forgiveness and, most of all, about regret.
–The Globe and Mail
Canadian author Garfield Ellis takes readers on a dusty yet sensual Caribbean travelogue.
–Quill & Quire
This moving father/son story…[is] an enormously satisfying book.
–Best New Fiction
It takes a lot to stand out in the crowded field of Caribbean lit, but Garfield Ellis grabs mystery, family, love, hate, longing, and loss, boils them down to a Jamaica we don’t always see, and rises to the top.
–Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings Everton Dorril, a rising star at a Jamaican beverage company, immediately fears the worst when his stepmother calls one morning to tell him his father is missing. Everton soon discovers that his father has run off to track down a woman he has been in love with for thirty-five years. An outside child born to his father’s mistress, Everton deeply resents his father and hates the idea of jeopardizing the most important moment in his career to go find him, but feels he has no other choice. His father’s stubborn refusal to return home leads Everton to reluctantly give up a week of work–one week only–to join him on his quest. By the fourth day, Everton is fed up with his father’s lies and excuses. In spite of his better judgment, and worried his father might be dying, Everton finally confronts him one drunken night and airs his resentments. He discovers that his father, frightened and unhappy with the failings of his past, is seeking closure and reconciliation. Fearing this is his last chance to find out more about the father who had no time for him when he was growing up, Everton and his father set out on an adventurous quest across Jamaica, hoping to make up for lost time.
