Victoire Victorious

Mythic characters, dark fairy-tale themes, and the harsh realities of race, gender, and class in the French Antilles underpin an earthy and complex story from this former professor of French at Columbia University. It is the story of Victoire, a brilliant chef, loosely based on the author’s own grandmother, who bore her mother at age fourteen and of whom the narrator has only a single sepia-toned photograph.

She writes, “What I am claiming is the legacy of this woman who apparently did not leave any. I want to establish the link between her creativity and mine, to switch from the savors, the colors and the smells of meat and vegetables to those of words.”

In a unique voice Ms. Conde portrays the beauty and ugliness of the
French Caribbean islands and the coarseness inherent in most unequal
power relationships born of colonialism and slavery. The novel is set in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Paradoxically, the use of
language is exceptionally fine throughout, both sparkling and even
sumptuous, no matter the subject.

Victoire, My Mother’s Mother. By Maryse Conde; translated by
Richard Philcox; Atria International, $20; 182 pages.