Less known faces of Jamaica.

Review of Bernadette Gabay Dyer. Waltzes I have not forgotten. Novel. Toronto: Women's Press. 2004. 218 pages. Paper. US $18.95.

Waltzes I Have not Forgotten is Bernadette Gabay Dyer's second book of fiction. The first, Villa Fair, is a collection of penetrating, brilliantly written short stories that focus on characters from various ethnic groups and social backgrounds. In their Jamaican and overseas settings, and in their themes--poverty, interclass conflict, immigration and refugees--these stories have much in common with Waltzes I Have not Forgotten. It's possible too, given the seams in Waltzes I Have not Forgotten, that it too was initially structured as a series of interconnecting short stories.

Historically, Waltzes I Have not Forgotten is set between both World Wars. It begins during World War I and culminates during World War II. Geographically, it is set in Kingston, Jamaica and London's Chelsea and Mile End districts.

Narrated from a first-person point of view, the novel is conceived as John Moneague's coming-of-age story. John is born as a result of the rape of Margaret Moneague, an orphan who comes to Kingston during World War I in search of housekeeping work. Unable to find work Margaret is homeless in Kingston. Just as she is about to give birth Margaret is rescued by Madam Hung Chin, a Chinese immigrant shopkeeper. When John is four his mother is stabbed to death, and he becomes the ward of Mme Hung Chin, who sends him to a school for Chinese immigrant children. Madam Hung Chin teaches him the Chinese language Hakka. But the aged Madam Hung Chin soon dies and John becomes the ward of a white American teacher Miss Shaw (through whom he discovers his talent for puppetry), but Miss Shaw's departure for the US puts John in the custody of the Mitners--Jews who've found refuge in Jamaica. This episode introduces us to two of the novel's more important characters: the Mitners' maid Clarissa and her son Gerald.

The increased persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria during the 1930s motivates the Mitners to move to London's Chelsea, where they combine John's puppeteering, Mrs. Mitner's document-forging skills, and Dr. Mitner's European refugee networks to outwit the British immigration authorities into allowing more refugees into Britain. A decline in Dr. Mitner's revenues (possibly due to the Great Depression) forces the household to move into Mile End, then London's Jewish neighbourhood. And so on and so forth. Suffice it to say that in this novel all ends well. John is able to reconnect with Miss Shaw, who on a visit from the US to Britain, decides to join the refugee effort. Gerald and John graduate from university and Clarissa finds a husband

Although this novel is over plotted at the expense of characterization, it nevertheless has many strong points. The evocation of setting is one of them; whether it is 1920s Kingston or 1930s Chelsea and Mile End, the setting is cinematic and credible. It points not only to the extensive research that Gabay-Dyer undertook in preparation for writing this novel, but to her skill in transforming historical facts into fiction. Interclass interaction is brilliantly done, and Gabay-Dyer employs it inadvertently as a corrective to the more stereotypic view of the Caribbean as societies where communal values are universally predominant. Yet another valuable aspect of this novel is the focus on the Jewish presence in Jamaica--a reality that is little known outside of Jamaica. Worth stressing are the many subtle levels at which the theme of refuge is depicted in the novel. To some degree, all the characters in minor or major ways need to be rescued. In this regard, Jamaica, seen today as a refugee-creating country, is shown in this novel as the refuge it once was for many. Gabay-Dyer's use of metaphors is excellent: puppetry, for example (in essence metamorphosing into other identities), at which John excels, and the reason for which the Mitners exploit him, is a metaphor that tinctures the entire novel and imbues it with a literary quality.