"The Mermaid of Black Conch" by Monique Roffey (Peepal Tree, 2020)

Crowd-funded. Ideas from Neruda, Hemingway, etc.

Various viewpoints - omniscient, mermaid PoV, and David's retrospective Journal.

Off Black Conch in the Caribbean, 2 americans (nasty banker and bisexual law-student poetry-liking son) who are hunting for marlin catch a mermaid after a (for me) too-long struggle. Back ashore they hang her up expecting to became rich. In the night, David Bapiste, a poor fisherman who'd seen her before (she was attracted by his singing; her name meaning 'pretty voice'), cuts her down and hides her in his hovel. She's 1,000 years old. In 10 days she (Aycayia) transforms back to a 20 year-old red-skinned woman. "In the papers he'd read about women's struggle in the university and marches for power to black people, so she'd arrived at a good time, if any, to come back". They spent 5 months together.

Miss Rain is white and owns much of the area. She and David are cousins. She has a deaf 10 year-old boy, Reggie, who knows sign language. Reggie's native father Life disappeared before he was born. She teaches Aycayia language. Reggie and Aycayia get on well - both are outsiders, looking for peers.

It's "a small place full of interwoven families. From birth, people developed the necessary social skill of being duplicitous ... Never say true things if it didn't help matters". It's a society where women stay and men roam.

Aycayia was cursed for being beautiful and young. The curse endures - fish rain down and a storm rises. She begins to revert. She tries to hang herself - she doesn't want to be alone again in the sea. Again David saves her.

David proposes to Aycayia. Their neighbour Priscilla threatens to expose them. Life pops back for a surprise visit. Priscilla gets a lover/policeman to arrest David and Aycayia. The 2 Americans are summoned back. Life and Miss Rain free the couple and return Aycayia to the sea. They blackmail the policeman to stop him pressing charges. Life and Miss Rain get together again. David sometimes sees Aycayia.

Various types of relationships and racism are on show. Female freedom (of Aycaya and Miss Rain) has consequences. Mythic elements combine with a description of village life.

Typo - p.103: "once she had tripped, fallen down the stars".

Other reviews

• Anthony Cummins (Roffey fleshes out these mythical goings-on with pin-sharp detail from the real world ... this is the archetypal story of a disruptive outsider whose arrival alters a community by revealing it to itself)
• Alison Glassie (the novel juxtaposes relationships founded upon power, possession and extraction with the genuine loves and frustrations)
• lonesome reader