Amanda Smyth writes like a descendant of Jean Rhys. Black Rock is a powerful cocktail of heat and beautiful coolness, written in a heady, mesmerising yet translucent prose which marks Smyth out as a born novelist * Ali Smith *
A lovely piece of storytelling * Waterstone's Books Quarterly *
A beautifully written story of her journey into adulthood. Tropical landscape, realistic dialogue and a strong plotline make this debut a winner -- Jennifer Ryan * Image Magazine *
Her writing is as lushly beautiful as the landscape she describes - it's the kind of novel that leaves your head filled with gorgeous pictures -- Kate Saunders * The Times *
A beautiful, lyrical novel -- Patrick Freyne * Sunday Tribune *
A captivating read -- Aisling Foster * Irish Times *
A stunning debut novel -- Anna Carey * The Gloss *
Certain novels are alive with colour. Written in lush, lyrical language evocative of its tropical setting, Amanda Smyth's Black Rock is awash with bougainvillea, parakeets, blue crabs, manicous, rum, coconuts and obeah folk magic. Celia is its narrator, a teenage orphan who lives with her aunt and cousins on the island of Tobago in the 1950s.Despite the sensorial intoxication of the setting, though, her sorry tale is one of feminine and racial subjugation... Smyth's debut is an absorbing and morally complex read with a bittersweet twist at the end -- Melissa McClements * Financial Times *
Black Rock explores the extent to which one can - and ought - to wriggle free from family ties... Smyth is a skilful ventriloquist; the local patois is energetically conjured, and the narrative pace is gripping. In painterly images, Smyth evocatively shows more than she tells. Not only people but place exerts a powerful force...There are echoes of the archetypal "mad woman", if not in an attic then in a marital room in the Caribbean, with scenes reminiscent of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea... this is a vivid and compelling story, exploring the extent of our control over our destinies -- Anita Sethi * Independent *
On her recovery, she goes to work for the kindly doctor who tended to her. He is unhappily married and, before long, makes a pass at Celia.She is a damaged but irresistible heroine, and her inability to refuse him raises much readerly sympathy... Smyth's story is a powerful, authentic one and Celia is an appealing, earthy, yet spiritual heroine who grows, wounded and embattled, through the course of the book. -- Lesley McDowell * Independent on Sunday *
Celia begins a feverish affair with Rodriguez and reveals herself as a complex character, simultaneously trapped and powerful; Smyth writes entrancingly on tropical heat and light, indolence, vengeance and desire. -- Catherine Taylor * Guardian *
I've a feeling that all reviews of this book will use the word 'exotic' at least one. This is a novel that positively begs for it, with its Caribbean setting, expressive and ornate style, and tangled narrative web of sex, race and emotional turmoil. -- Darragh McManus * Irish Independent *
Amanda Smyth tells this story of lust and love, mingled with hints of the supernatural, with beauty and clarity. A first novel of promise. -- Gwyn Griffiths * Morning Star *
A very remarkable book * DoveGreyReader *
In the mid-twentieth-century Trinidad and Tobago of Amanda Smyth's antipatriarchal debut novel, it's infuriatingly easy to keep a good woman down... Like Alice Walker, Smyth vividly and empathetically re-creates the gender and racial tensions in a culture's past, making them newly relevant * US Elle *
This beautifully assured debut is rich with the sumptuous vistas, poetry and spirit of the Caribbean...Clashes of culture, temperament, loyalty and love jostle together, with the dramatic events and quandaries woven together with lyricism, tenderness and sensuality * Easy Living *
Set in the intense heat and vibrant lushness of the Caribbean, this compelling novel tells the story of Celia, an orphan with a prophecy hanging over her...it sings with life, texture and verve -- Victoria Moore * Daily Mail *
Scorpions, snakes and fat spiders dart about Smyth's immensely pleasurable novel, set on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1950s...Smyth elevates her plot several notches above hothouse pulp through Celia's engaging first-person voice and the use of period details that compactly ... delineate major and minor characters alike...[It] moves along confidently to its denouement, a pat bit of Dickensian knottying that seems to say, "Life is messy, and fiction should clean it up." -- Jan Stewart * New York Times Book Review *
