What readers think of Claire of the Sea Light, plus links to write your own review.

Love the title of this book and the cover, even though I read it on my kindle I can see the cover on this site. This book was like a circular maze, where the prize is in the middle and you just follow in circular movements. It starts with a young seven yr. old Claire going missing from her village and home. This is not a linear book so after this we learn about the villagers that make up this town called Ville Rose. At one point when they switched to a new story I thought to myself, what does this have to do with anything, but shortly thereafter it all came clear.

We do not learn very much about the political situation in Haiti, as this is a character driven novel, with the town being one of the characters. We only learn about things in a wider view when they effect either a villager or the town, such as the gangs that prevailed at the time. Claire's mother died when she was born, in Haiti this made Claire a revenant. The characterizations are fantastically presented, one learns many things that happened before Claire was born, things that would effect Claire later. We learn about Claire's mother just from the viewpoints of the other characters. The language of the novel sometime reads almost like poetry, so many of the phrases are just beautiful, like those describing the ocean.

There are no great action scenes, this is a quiet but poignant novel. I have never read Danticat before, but I am anxious now to do so.