meghan rose allen

In 2005, when I was volunteering in Costa Rica, I spent a morning cutting sugar cane. It was supposed to be part of a cultural exchange. I was volunteering with a group of Australians. Perhaps sugar cane grows in Australia and the Australians knew what they were getting into, since very few of them agreed to go help. I didn’t even agreed. I came back from teaching a group of kids English and was told that tomorrow I had the privilege of going to help chop sugar cane.

If you ever use sugar, I think that perhaps you should spend a morning cutting sugar cane on a sugar cane farm in the cold rain while someone yells at you in not your mother tongue. After one morning, my hands were cut up, my clothing was ripped, I was wet through to my internal organs, and one hundred percent sheer miserable. I can see why “suddenly” our Tico friend had no one to help cut his cane. It’s ridiculously awful work that no one in their right mind would do unless there were few-to-zero other options.

So we get to Queen Sugar, a book where an LA woman (as in Los Angeles) inherits an LA sugar cane farm (as in Louisiana woman). As I can attest, sugar cane farming is hard work. So there’s the typical will she lose the farm plot line, a few cardboard basic villains, family drama, love interest, and a Deus Ex Machina plot resolution at the end. It’s basically a Lifetime Movie plot put into the book. There’s no real depth to any of the characters with backstory (divorce, teenage pregnancy, drugs, dead spouses) used as character development, rather than actual character development. Baszile doesn’t seem comfortable enough in her writing letting the characters go as dark as they need to (for example Ralph Angel or the white sugar cane farmers who lurk around the edges trying to get the protagonist to sell). The same with race, which is treated almost flippantly and not of much consequence, even though it’s race that plays a large part in the dénouement of Ralph Angel’s plot line. Baszile is a starting author, so I get it — it can be hard to go deep without letting backstory or anger about race relations take over. But the story could have gone deeper. As it is, the stakes that should feel high don’t. Of course, it’s nice in life to have everything work out, but in a book, the lack of meaningful conflict, I don’t want to say bores because that is too harsh, so maybe provokes disinterest in me is what I’ll say instead.

There are my other judgy things: too many metaphors, interesting characters not used as much as they could be, etc. But then there are moments of pure life, like how the sound of Gulf of Mexico water against a boat goes glup, glup, glup. That is the sound. Now, I’ve only heard Florida and Belize Gulf of Mexico water lap against the sides of boats, but it’s true, it goes glup. It’s somehow soothing to know that water makes the same sound in Louisiana.

There are a lot of books I read where I think, when I’m done, my mother would like this. I think my mother would like this book. Whereas I found a the flatness of the conflict and urgency monotonous, I know others would like the lapping glup, glup, glup of calm progression. Like The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared, Queen Sugar has the same feel: book club faux literary, mildly heartwarming, and some people are going to love it.

Not me, but that’s okay too. I’d love to read Baszile three or four books down the line when her confidence has skyrocketed. That’ll be something to look forward to.

Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile went on sale January 27, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.