Bianca Bridge has always dreamt of becoming a writer. But Trinidadian society can be unforgiving, and having an affair with a married government official is a sure-fire way to ruin your prospects. So when Obadiah Cortland, a notoriously tyrannical entrepreneur in the island's beauty scene, offers her a job, Bianca accepts, realizing that working on his magazine is the closest to her dreams she'll get. But as Bianca begins to embrace her power and creative voice, she starts to suspect Obadiah is not the elite tyrant he seems.
Vibrant ... The vivid narration shifts between her diaries and his fierce, idiomatic first person narration. Both narrators regularly dissect the complex social dynamics of modern Trinidad's still highly stratified society, the challenges of social change, and where ideas about beauty and Carnival fit within the mix ... Incisive ... The gradually revealed inner lives and motivations of both characters are equally compelling ... A vibrant, nuanced, and entertaining view of Caribbean culture, a perspective that transcends both trauma and pure escapism.
Though it’s set in the world of the Caribbean beauty industry and its fascination with makeup might seem frivolous at first glance, Mc Ivor’s entertaining first novel is anything but skin deep ... Mc Ivor uses the beauty industry to explore the rifts created by poverty, sexism, and class in modern-day Trinidad, revealing how ingrained misogyny can be in a patriarchal society and how hard it can be to overcome.
