Notes from a Writer’s Book of Cures and Spells

Flamingo, a young Jamaican writer, finds her life becoming enmeshed with those of her characters: Dahlia, a young girl growing up in ghetto Kingston; her beautiful one-eyed half-sister, Alva, who dreams of fashion design in New York; their brother, Paul, known as ‘made in China’ because of his love of the coconut cakes in Mrs. Ying’s shop, and Rastafarian Madda who sits in her windowsill stealing needles, bottle caps and hairpins from passers-by. When through poverty, emigration and Jamaica’s political upheavals, this fictional family is dispersed, Alva solicits Flamingo’s help to bring them back together. Organised as a writer’s notebook, and sprinkled with recipes, herbal advice, dream interpretations and found material, ‘Notes’ is written with the poetry that in her previous novel, Madam Fate, attracted so many admirers.