The Pink House at Appleton

Book excerpt: This is the second edition of The Pink House at Appleton, a disturbing novel of adultery and betrayal. about a Jamaican childhood, a domineering father and a submissive mother on a Jamaican sugar estate. Set in 1950s Jamaica during British colonial rule, the novel covers a year in the life of a black middle-class Jamaican family at Appleton Sugar Estate. Against a background of subtle race and class prejudice and adultery, the novel describes the fate of the Brookes family when Harold Brookes, proud and ambitious, determined to establish himself and bring up his family with the right values, is unable to measure up to his own ideals. His clandestine relationship with Ann Mitchison, the white wife of the English assistant general manager of the estate, and the ramifications of a previous, secret liaison with a common woman, bring about the destruction of both families. The story is about the meeting of innocence and experience, seen mainly through the eyes of the sexually aware eight-year-old Boyd Brookes, who is smitten with seven-year-old Susan Mitchison. The two children nurture a secret relationship and see each other as romantic characters in a book. They finally meet after a slow, sensual build-up, but the relationship is cut short as their families disintegrate, and as a playful event brings about sudden tragedy...