How the One-Armed Sister [Clean] Sweeps Her House

Hello and welcome back!

To start off, I’m so sorry for the delay on this post. I was working extra shifts at the studio last week and that on top of my regular training just exhausted me mentally and physically. I was so exhausted that it wasn’t until I woke up last Sunday morning that I realized I hadn’t written a review! Unfortunately, this also means I won’t be doing my next review for three weeks. I would try and bust it out in a week, but I really doubt I’ll be able to. And, I would just switch up my regular timeline and do the next one in two weeks, but that won’t work with my schedule. So, to make my life easier, I’ll be doing the next review in three weeks. But, stay tuned next week for a mini post about how my rating system works!

Well, now that that’s all out of the way let’s get into the good stuff. This week, I’m reviewing Cherie Jones’ debut novel, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House. And my cocktail of the week is a Clean Sweep. Enjoy!

Clean Sweep Recipe

1.5oz Gin

0.5oz Dry Vermouth

0.25oz Coconut Rum*

2oz Prosecco

2oz Simple Syrup

0.5oz Lemon Juice

1 Lemon Twist

*Coconut rum is optional.

In a shaker with ice, add gin, vermouth, coconut rum, simple syrup, and lemon juice. Then shake for around 10 seconds and strain into a champagne flute. To finish off, top each glass with Prosecco and garnish with a twist of lemon.

This week, my special ingredient is coconut rum. I decided to use coconut rum because there are coconut trees outside of Lala and Adan’s house. They frequently discuss the coconuts and how Adan can cut them down and sell them to scrounge up some extra money. The other reason I chose coconut rum is that in many of the descriptions of the paradise of Barbados the tourists are drinking rum punches. So, I figured coconut rum was a perfect ingredient to add in that reflected a few different aspects of the novel.

I liked this cocktail a lot with and without the special ingredient. Without the coconut rum, it kind of tasted like a floral, lemon-y Prosecco. With the coconut rum, it just tasted the same, but with coconut mixed in. So, if you like coconut you’ll like my variation of the Clean Sweep. But, if you like something a bit more simple and less tropical you’ll probably prefer the regular cocktail. Either way, I definitely recommend trying this one out!

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House Synopsis

In Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, Lala’s grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers and go into the Baxter’s tunnels. When she’s grown, Lala lives on the beach with her husband, Adan, a petty criminal with endless charisma whose thwarted burglary of one of the beach mansions sets off a chain of events with terrible consequences. A gunshot no one was meant to witness. A new mother whose baby is found lifeless on the beach. A woman torn between two worlds and incapacitated by grief. And two men driven into the tunnels by desperation and greed who attempt a crime that will risk their freedom—and their lives.

Review

“…if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving.”

Yay! Another book I liked and have good things to write about. Hopefully this trend keeps up and I continue picking some good ones. As easy as it is to write the more negative reviews I really prefer having positive things to say about people’s work. Unfortunately, it’s not all positives for this one as it did take me a little while to get into it. But, I appreciated this look into Caribbean life in the 1980s nonetheless. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House masterfully showed that while it may be a paradise for white tourists it is anything but for those who call it home.

The writing style of this novel is hard to describe. It is so unique and perfectly expresses the story and the characters. The really interesting thing is how the writing would slightly change depending on which character was the focus of the chapter. This was interesting because it wasn’t first person narrative, so reading a different chapter about a different character wasn’t like changing points of view. Instead, the narration changed in a way that was subtle and beautiful and (irritatingly) hard to describe, but worked to better express that specific character.

This is really clear in Lala’s chapters where the more poetic aspects of the prose are on display. Some of Lala’s chapters had this really beautiful repetition throughout them that felt hypnotizing. This poetic, rhythmic repetition works to continuously draw you in and back to focus, and makes it hard to take your eyes away from the novel. Jones was truly flexing her writing muscles with this narrative that is, at once, jarring and poetic and brilliant.

Beyond this, the descriptions are beautiful. They draw you in so that you feel part of the world and experience what the characters feel. And, it goes beyond just empathizing with the characters to something deeper that I can’t quite describe properly, but Jones probably could. Her writing, especially the descriptive aspect, is exemplary in how perfectly it embodies the first rule of writing—show don’t tell. The way the prose draws emotions out of the reader without explicitly stating those emotions in the character is wonderful. I would read a whole chapter where the word desperate never came up, but by the end I was absorbed in that feeling. That’s how strongly the prose is working in this novel to describe and represent these things without ever telling you. It’s honestly just a writer respecting her audience. And I respect that. It’s truly quite magical to read this book.

Part of what makes How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House magical is the characters. Each character was fleshed out and given so much depth. Some pull you in and have you rooting for them, while others make you want to cringe. But, they are all nuanced characters that have so many different sides. I was actually shocked by how much depth each character was given since there were so many. But, even the side characters whose names only come up a handful of times and only have one chapter of their own are special and rounded out. And all these standout characters come together to form this cohesive, full, beautiful story that needs every one of them. And honestly, I haven’t been this invested in characters in a while.

The novel switches between characters a lot and in time a lot by going back and forth in the characters’ lives. This all took a bit of getting used to at first and I did find it hard to keep track of everything for the first little while of the book. But, once you started to know the characters and understand them and their lives it began to flow really nicely, and then the switches seemed natural and necessary and no longer confusing.

On this same note, the novel was a bit slow to start. Which seems surprising for a novel that has so much action packed into the first couple chapters. But, because of the need to get adjusted to the novel, all the intense stuff that happens immediately seemed small because there was no attachment to the characters. However, I think Jones did this on purpose and it had a really interesting effect on the novel that ended up pulling me in and making it unputdownable. Normally, we as readers are waiting for the craziness to happen, but in this novel it already has and we’re instead getting the lead up and the fallout. And, somehow, this is all the more dramatic and enchanting. And, don’t worry more twists and turns and excitement still happen!

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House isn’t just a beautiful, magical novel. It’s also a dark and deep novel. It covers topics such as sexual assault, domestic abuse, death of children, drugs, poverty, sex work, and, above all, desperation. The novel was honestly quite hard to read at times with how dark it got, but Jones’ superb writing and multi-dimensional characters make you want to continue reading. A lot of this darkness is beautifully juxtaposed against the notion of paradise. For the white tourists in Barbados, it is idyllic and heavenly. But, for the black townspeople it is a place of poverty and desperation. It’s really interesting to see the town from the perspective of all these different characters, and see how a place can all at once be both a paradise and a dark underworld.

Overall, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House was haunting, beautiful, and magical. There were so many layers to the novel and the writing was different, poetic, and mesmerizing. Truly a standout book for me this year so far even though it did take me a little while to get into it. I definitely will be picking up Jones’ next novel, and I recommend you pick up this one. And, if you don’t want to read the novel I still recommend trying the cocktail as well. See you in three weeks for another review! (One week for the mini, non-review post!)

My Rating:

Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment, on Instagram, or in person (if you know me). Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading Tears of the Prophets and The Kindest Lie if you liked this one!

Teghann

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