Red Jacket Paperback – February 28, 2015

Read Pamela Mordecai’s Red Jacket for the mystery at its heart—the identity of a child named Grace, an adopted outsider, a red-haired, green-eyed, freckle-faced child who doesn’t look like anyone in her black family, a child who learns the stories of her biological mother and father as the novel unfolds. She’s the red jacket of the title, red referring to her light colouring, jacket Jamaican Creole for her status as an outsider.Read this book for the stories that are behind the story, for the stories that remain untold at its end.Read this book for its wide-ranging sense of time. Grace’s biological mother’s story is told, her biological father’s. Grace grows to adulthood, travels the world, has a child of her own, lies near death.Read this book for its wide-ranging sense of place, including two places that don’t actually exist—the skillfully imagined countries of St. Christopher in the Caribbean and Mabuli in West Africa.Read this book for characters you’ll feel strongly about—you’ll love them and hate them. And you’ll remember them.Read this book for a world of minor characters—about 150 characters are named—roundly, deftly sketched.Read this book for the richness and vigor of its language.Read this book for its ability both to delight and terrify.Pamela Mordecai’s Red Jacket is epic.Read this book.Sheryl LoefflerAuthor, A Land in the Storytelling Sea

I was predisposed to like this book. I say that because after hearing the author, Pamela Mordecai interviewed on CBC Radio, I felt I would like to meet her, sit down over a cup of tea or glass of wine and just listen to what she had to say. The Red Jacket did not disappoint. The author's charming on-air personality seeps through her characters. I was especially enamoured by the relationship between the protagonist, Grace Carpenter, and her grandfather. His homespun wisdom could help a lot of people. This book explores universal struggles: identity and culture and colour and gender and faith and family. I stopped short of five stars because of my ambivalence about the ending, but all in all, this was a beautifully written novel, a satisfying read. No surprise that Pam Mordecai was a finalist for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize.

Pamela Mordecai is a well known poet who was born in Jamaica, educated at Universities in the USA, taught in High School in Jamaica, performed in theatre, before migrating to Canada where she focuses on writing ever more intriguing and stirring poetry. Until now. Red Jacket is her first novel and it has been well worth waiting for. The range of her experiences has been infused into a story that incorporate believable experiences from the Caribbean, the US and Africa. This is not a simple travelogue, however. A clearly intelligent and sensitive child confronts plausible experiences that makes for a series of difficult choices, and the developing of a complex woman who is shaken as well as stirred to emerge as credible heroine. A particular intelligence of the author is the credibility and substance of the circumstances and persons with whom her main character's life (and her own) interacts, even at a distance. The readers of this first novel will want more from this poet.

What an amazing book (Red Jacket). From the first sentence the “voice” takes hold. Red Jacket sparkles with intelligence, and extraordinary sentences especially when describing the Caribbean: “green eyelash leaves”, … “the sun taking its time nibbling the wet grass as it saunters up the other side of the low hill …”As one would expect of a poet, the writing is spare, and sure-footed as it goes through the issues of women, AIDS, race and even prophecy. This is an absorbing and inspiring book for everyone, whatever race or wherever they may live.

If you relish a thought-provoking read, don't miss Pamela Mordecai's first novel RED JACKET. This refreshingly raw and unvarnished account of the life and loves of a girl who is different, knows she is different, but does not learn about the ugly circumstances of her birth until she is a mother herself, leaves you wanting more pages to turn.The author has woven a tapestry that is rich with the colour, the twists, turns and looping-over artistry of those magical patterns that catch our eyes and hold our attention. One cannot help but be moved by the ecstasy, the pathos, the longing to belong and the never-ending questioning about her place in a complex and complicated world by this heroine, Grace. Because she is an academic whose sharp mind sees the world often stripped bare of the niceties that make each day bearable, we journey with her through the mazes, both actual and spiritual of a life rich with gain and loss. We feel her pain, her hunger for knowledge, her love for the men who capture her heart and her interest, and are intrigued by her never-ending quest for understanding the weighty questions of the human condition and our faith in a beneficent Creator.Would that my mother was still alive.She'd relish this book as a Mother's Day gift to remember.

One of the reasons I read is to experience life and places through the eyes and experiences of others. RED JACKET is an astonishing and layered tale that does that in many ways and many times over. Through the life of Grace, the central character and the red jacket, I witnessed the depth and breadth of her personal journey and the many places where she lived and travelled. Her journey brings her into the lives of a credible cavalcade of characters who are equally interesting. Harsh realities of life, lost and seized opportunities, secrets long unfolding, mystical experiences… all enliven this book. Thanks to Pamela Mordecai for bringing it all to life.

"Red Jacket was totally absorbing and tugged at my heart strings, with its intricately woven story about the search for belonging and for love. As the underlying tensions and violence of the story gradually surface, one is drawn ever more into the plot - it is really "un-put-downable". Never two-dimensional, the characters demonstrate the truths that bad things happen to good people, and good people are capable of bad judgements and bad deeds. With a poet's ear for the rhythm of language and dialect, Pam Mordecai brings alive the voices of the characters as the action ranges across continents and cultures. Her writing is reminiscent of Isabel Allende in the atmosphere evoked and the completeness of the characters. The setting of the mythical St Chris entices any reader, but specially resonates with anyone from a Caribbean background. "

One of the reasons I read is to experience life and places through the eyes and experiences of others. RED JACKET is an astonishing and layered tale that does that in many ways and many times over. Through the life of Grace, the central character and the red jacket, I witnessed the depth and breadth of her personal journey and the many places where she lived and traveled. Her journey brings her into the lives of a credible cavalcade of characters who are equally interesting. Harsh realities of life, lost and seized opportunities, secrets long unfolding, mystical experiences… all enliven this book. Thanks to Pamela Mordecai for bringing it all to life.

I bought this book because I heard the author's reading at the Literary Festival in Jamaica. It is a great story. I was disappointed that we, the readers did not "attend the awards ceremony. I was looking forward to the interaction of the family are friends. I was also hoping to hear how and why the heroine became ill. I was disappointed in the ending.

I believe the auther tried to cram too much into this book, so it lost me at times in it's details. It felt disconnected with all the characters that weren't really linked until the end of the book.

I did not enjoy this book. I had a difficult time following the characters. I persevered and finished the book, but I was almost half way through before I began to understand where the story was going, and then I was left with a long drawn out, disappointing ending.