Review of the White woman on the green bicycle by Monique Roffey

About a year ago I happened to get a book by Monique Roffey with an intriguing title The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, with information on the cover that the book was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction in 2010. I read this book of over 400 pages almost at a go, so captivating I found it, and then reread it slowly and closely following the details of the plot and enjoying its fantastic imagery. In this review I will describe my impression of the novel, and I will certainly try to avoid spoiling the pleasure for those whom my review might persuade to read the book.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is a compelling, curious and challenging example of modern fiction. I would recommend it for young adults (18+) who will be astonished at how complicated and fragile life might turn, and certainly to more experienced readers who will recognize their own emotional experience. The novel is set against real events that took place in the second half of the 20^th century on the island of Trinidad, one of Britain’s former colonies in the Caribbean.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle has an intriguing plot and a complex multilayered structure with two endings. After a short thrilling prologue that pulls you in straight away and promises a detective novel, you are given in fact the tragic end of the story as it describes what happens to the main characters and what is going on in Trinidad in 2006. Then the story starts to develop backwards, and you cannot put the novel off because you are eager to learn more about what lead the characters and the country to this totally appalling situation in 2006. The action is flashed back into 1956 when George and Sabine Harwood, newly married, so young, inexperienced, absolutely in love with each other, arrive in Trinidad, planning it to become a temporary stay in life before finally settling in Britain. Others basked

in our happiness, envied our devotion ‒ this is how Sabine speaks of those years [Roffey 2009: 230]. Their ambition and unreserved mutual trust are their first mistakes which will lead to many others. You follow their lives through the sixties and seventies, watching them getting older, transformed, disillusioned, intimidated and eventually beaten and smashed by this ‘self contained and green’ country [Roffey 2009: 197]. In the novel Monique Roffey puts a very painful question: What is it like to be alien and to have to live your whole life in a culture that you misinterpret but find irresistibly attractive? I think her answer is that you will get deceived, exhausted and then dismissed as useless.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is based on emotional rides. Your attitude to the main characters and the events in Trinidad keep changing from admiration to loathing and the other way round. There are no good or bad characters, now you sympathise with Sabine’s will for survival and then you are disgusted by her possessiveness towards her children and her complete dependence on George’s moods. Or, you may find some Trinidadians deeply sensitive and generous at one moment and the next moment you are shocked at their treachery. The story of 2006 is told by the 3rd person narrator but obviously from George’s point of view, and it is for him that your empathy is directed. Then, in the parts about the earlier years, the events and characters are described by Sabine in the 1st person, and you cannot help siding with her. Besides, it is a story of tragic misunderstanding. From the very beginning Sabine and George have absolutely different intentions about Trinidad. While George immediately falls in love with the country and secretly decides to stay on the island forever, buying land and building a big house to make home, Sabine longs to return to Britain, because she feels oppressed by the language, the climate, the political instability on the island, she feels restless, trapped and constantly frustrated. At first she is ready to adapt herself to the new situation, she is absolutely fearless and flexible. Then her anger and depression unobtrusively start taking over. She sees through her husband, being very shrewd of his motives. Making friends with the locals does not help: the closer Sabine gets involved and attached to the country, the more hostile Trinidad becomes towards her. In the changing family situation and in the shattered situation on the island, Sabine becomes infatuated and later really obsessed with young Dr. Eric Williams, the new political leader who promises to deal with cor- ruption, poverty, race discrimination in the post-colonial country and to drive the white settlers out of it. Sabine writes letters to Eric Williams for many years but never sends them. Her obsession turns into an agonizing love, bitter and almost sensual, for this talented and charismatic man. As you might expect, George will find those letters one day and he will be astounded by the deepness of Sabine’s loneliness and crushed by guilt. His longing for atonement, which is eating him away, is her unplanned (or probably planned?) revenge for his betrayal and adultery. But it is not his adultery with certain women, but it is his adultery with the country, which the author shows as Sabine’s only rival in the competition for George’s love:

I saw what George saw and knew, finally, that I had competition [Roffey 2009: 265].

It was uneasy relationship, the kind of love which made me on edgeall the time. Like an infection, a festering, niggling, burning sensation: an insect bite [Roffey 2009: 321].

The green hills near their new house look like a real woman to Sabine, shapely, cunning and tempting, ‘ voluptuous ’ as Sabine describes them [Roffey 2009: 315]:

… those massive hills… herhefty green shoulders, her giant head, the holes of her eyes,her wild and bushy hair. By day she watched us and at night she came alive [Roffey 2009: 324].

That is the woman who drains George’s strength, steals Sabine’s children from her and traps the Harwoods into their self-imposed slavery.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is a book about a different place full of local colour. You will find impressive descriptions of the landscapes, flora and fauna of the island. Take for instance, the armies of Sabine’s ferocious enemies – mosquitoes, scorpions, bach-acs(red ants), cockroaches, spiders, tack tacks (big black ants), wasps, caterpillars, beetles, pipistrelles(tiny bats), wood lice, centipedes – creeping, wriggling, ‘marching in unwavering columns’, vibratingand driving Sabine ‘mad with murdering these beasts’[Roffey 2009: 304‒ 305]. Monique Roffey masterfully appeals to all the senses of the reader. Your eyes will enjoy the abundant greenery, sunsets as ‘pomegranate seeds’ [Roffey 2009: 65] and the ‘tea-green’ surf [Roffey 2009: 263]. And you will hear the roar of the ocean, the rattle of hurricanes, the rain like ‘a lashing, a bombing’ [Roffey 2009: 262], ‘raucous streets of downtown Port of Spain’, ‘a cacophony of street ven- dors, ringing their bells, cars honking them out the way’ [Roffey 2009: 231]. You will feel the oppressive humidity, stifling, ‘stupendous’ heat [Roffey 2009: 198], the ‘mighty, omnipotent’ sun [Roffey 2009: 304], which are slowly killing and transforming Sabine:

I was always limp, half-hearted… dazed, forgetful. The heat punished me, treated me with contempt [Roffey 2009: 304].

The heat made me … less me. I was shades darker [Roffey 2009: 304].

You will also smell the fruit, the river and the port, and you will be shocked the different smells of the white and of the black (199, 285). And you will taste exotic Caribbean food, for example the mysterious calalou (no spoiling what it is).

Besides, you will surely find it interesting to follow the way Monique Roffey presents the English language spoken by Trinidadians – how, in writing, she allows the reader to hear their ‘ singsong ’ Creole accent, so catchy and melodic that Sabine and George’s children take it up refusing to speak the standard English of their parents. All this makes the book so atmospheric that you get seduced with the power and beauty of Trinidad and you will want to visit the country some day or at least to google Trinidad to have a glimpse of it and to read about its past and present on the internet.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is a historical novel describing the real events that took place in that rich Caribbean country in the post-colonial time, and fiction is neatly blended with fact in the novel. Dr. Eric Williams is a real person, the national hero who attempted to deal with the frustrating colonial past of Trinidad ‒ ‘ this mad… legacy of corrupt ruling ’ [Roffey 2009: 382].The culmination of the novel is Sabine’s report of Eric Williams’ mesmerizing and sarcastic lecture for the ‘ inflamed’ crowd of black Trinidadians – ‘ He preached freedom of the mind, breathed hope, a new sense of opportunity into the souls of those listening’ [Roffey 2009: 298]. Unfortunately, this hope was to be ruined. One of the most powerful pieces of imagery for me is Eric Williams’ dark glasses and his hearing aid, which for Sabine is a disappointing symbol of his deliberate selfdeception and refusal of his ideals.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is an example of various experiments with the form in British postmodern fiction, which Scarlett Baron analysed for us in Footpath Issue 11. As it has been mentioned, the chronological order of the events described is disrupted, there are some gaps in time which the reader has to fill with suppositions, for example, about what happens to Sabine and George in the gap between the last part (the 70s) and part 1 (2006). It is not only the story that is arranged in a reverse way. Many intriguing things that cannot be found in a dictionary are mentioned several times through the novel, and you keep wondering about what they might be. Eventually you will get the answers, not in a straightforward way, closer to the end of the book (for example, do you know what the verb to steupse means? I don’t think anyone does unless they come from Trinidad or have read the novel). The use of multiple perspectives is another example of Monique Roffey’s experimenting with the form, the result of which, I think, is that the novel fills you with compassion for both Sabine and George, and also for Eric Williams and Trinidadians, and I find it the most valuable feature of this book. Elements of meta-fictionality can also be traced in the novel: Sabine’s letters to Eric Williams are an important part of the story, they add new implications to her love-and-hate relationship with George and Trinidad.

To sum up, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is a very pleasurable reading, though it is sometimes almost physically painful. It raises many disturbing social questions, such as racism, the consequences of slavery, badly managed national wealth, inequality. I strongly recommend this very sad and beautiful book to all readers of Footpath.