Reviewed by Dolores J. Sloan
From HaLapid, Spring 2001
From the library in Toronto where she works to the neighborhood in which she lives, Bernadette Dyer sees much go by representing Toronto’s multicultural panoply. This clearly inspires many of the tales In Villa Fair, her collection of short stories. Other tales in the book are the germinated seeds of her own multiracial, multiethnic Jamaican and Portuguese Jewish ancestry. The people in her stories mirror her own ancestors -– émigrés from somewhere else, establishing roots in new lands, living through generational conflict fueled by the meeting of old with new, yet influencing the host country and/or culture which is richer for it, and will never be the same.
For example, there’s Kamla, the twenty-three-year-old Indian-Canadian narrator of “Driving Through Red Lights,” in love with a young Canadian man, while promised to an arranged marriage with someone from India. A surprise ending has Kamla’s parents and aunt facing cultural change on two continents.
In “Segovia Nights,” Carlos Fernandez captivates his listeners with legends, reinvented stories about a mythical family and past. The tall tales are indicative, however, of a far deeper problem. One senses that the author and the librarian in the story are one. Jomo, from “An African Out in the Cold,” is lost, then found again while visiting Toronto, as, unknown to him, his host has suffered a heart attack. His isolation and cultural shock are palpable.
Then there are tales coming from the richness of the author’s Jamaican memories. The story “Man Man” dances back and forth from spirit world to “reality,” as the ghost of a drowned seven-year-old boy moves comfortably among the local people of a plantation, until a new anglo mistress comes to stay. The author reports that the tale is among her favorites, and she enjoys reading it to groups.
Another from the Jamaican collection, "Ackee Night," shows how a much aggrieved woman, whose man has threatened idly to leave for years, calls on a Jamaican culinary secret to keep him permanently from other women -– and herself. The ending takes the reader by surprise, which is why the author thinks it’s so well liked by those she reads it to: “I suppose because it is so out there in left field.”
The title story, Villa Fair, also catches one by surprise, yet this reader felt puzzled by its sharp, unredeeming ending. Is Thunder, the chief male character, destroyed as a punishment for straying from his promise? Does the exotic, the magical always win out over the more conventional path?
Loving relations within families pervade Dyer’s tales. “Johns Lane” tells of Chinese women, marooned in Jamaica, who find survival in their love and caring for each other. The point of view in “Roberta on the Beach” changes several times, moving within a poor Montego Bay family from member to member, where the love among them and across the generations provides healing for human loss.
“Leaving Faro,” the final tale, is a paean to Dyer’s Portuguese Jewish ancestors, who fled to Jamaica to escape persecution. It is printed in its entirety on page five.
The mythical and the magical touch many of the stories. “Close the Blue Door” tells of mermen who lure their chosen loves to disaster, while in “Six Little Sparrows” the same number of Pakistani children and their mother shape shift into the title.
Dyer often reads her stories to audiences. “I myself like to read ‘Close the Blue Door’ and ‘Roberta on the Beach,’ and have had a lot of success with ‘Blue Door.’ A lot of women like ‘Roberta,’ and I'm wondering what men think of it. Women also adore ‘Segovia Stories’ and I suppose I do too.” The last comment brings a smile.
She also enjoys reading to Jewish teenagers from a private high school in Toronto. “They are studying Black History for Black History Month, and are planning a tour of the Underground Railroad. There are also some black students in the school who are studying Jewish history and they are all going to be taken to the wailing wall. It is really remarkable.”
The author’s Jamaica and Canada are pulsing, vibrant settings where her characters don’t want racial barriers to exist. Her families are strong and loving, evidencing the blurred lines of racial identity. Several of the stories, such as “Man Man” and “Roberta on the Beach,” satisfy in their present form, yet would benefit also as longer fictional works, with some of the characters developed further. “An African Out in the Cold,” seems a fragment, and one wishes for more.
Villa Fair is an entertaining collection of well-told tales. We await future works with interest.