We begin in Baxter’s Beach, Barbados. Wilma tells her headstrong granddaughter, Lala, a story. One of those cautionary tales or warnings about what happens to girls who don’t listen to their parents and go places they should not.

The next thing we see is a grown-up Lala living on the beach with her husband, Adan, who is an absolute horror of a man. Lala is pregnant now and scared she is losing her baby. Looking for her errant spouse, she comes upon a house on the wealthy side where she hears a gunshot and a scream and sees her husband running out of the gate.

That gunshot sets into motion some incredibly horrible things. Things that made my heart ache. A woman loses her husband and a new mom loses her daughter. One is wealthy and one is not. But the grief they have is the same.

A story of race and class systems and the vast differences between them. And what some of them will do to be on top.

Beautifully written and emotionally charged, it’s hard to believe this is a debut!

Well Done

NetGalley/ February 02, 2021, Little, Brown, And Company

Set in Barbados in the 1960s-1980s, this debut follows generations of a family as well as other inhabitants of the island as they struggle with poverty and violence. Lala is married to a criminal named Adan who is abusive. He makes his living by stealing and drug dealing. She is about to give birth to their first child and Adan is nowhere to be found. When the news breaks that a rich white tourist has been murdered after a robbery gone wrong, Lala knows Adan must have something to do with it.

I loved the narrator of this audiobook. She gave me chills in some parts and I had to pause to absorb the feelings that she was evoking for me. The writing style was so descriptive and I loved all of the imagery. You could very easily empathize with the characters as their pain felt real. The setting was really unique and I found that made the story unique. This was a heartbreaker for sure. The multiple timelines made it hard to connect the characters to each other but each perspective was written very well. Thank you to @librofm, @netgalley and @hachette.audio for this ALC.

Lala, young, married, and pregnant, is the latest in a family steeped in domestic violence and sexual abuse. Her grandmother raised her after the death of her own mother and this loss leads her to pursue the wrong man and unwittingly repeat the cycle. The story follows Lala through a series of missteps, allowing for chapters from other points of view to help round out the picture and some of the secondary characters that had a major impact on Lala's life. The book was well written and fast paced. A quick enjoyable read despite really really wanting to take Lala, give her a hug, and spirit her away from the trauma that was her world.

This is a short but powerful book that exposes how the culture of violent, controlling masculinity in a colonized island damages not just those who experience the brunt of it but also the society at large. Issues of race, class and gender are illuminated in a cast of characters who have experienced traumas that twist their lives and how each has coped--or not coped--with these traumas. Highly recommended with trigger warning for violence.
Cheri Jones was born in Barbados in 1974. A graduate of the MA program at Sheffield Hallam University, she was awarded a fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. Her short fiction has been published in PANK, Reflex Fiction and the Feminist Wire. Here is a link to an interview with the author. https://www.npr.org/2021/01/30/962358003/cherie-jones-debut-novel-sees-characters-in-paradise-put-through-hell

12 // “Let me tell you about a little girl like you that didn’t listen to her mother.”

in a resort town on Barbados, a burglary gone wrong triggers a series of events that unfold in HOW THE ONE-ARMED SISTER SWEEPS HER HOUSE. the characters in the story are all interconnected, despite the differences in race and class and season of life. this debut novel touches on themes of grief, motherhood, desperation, and ultimately, freedom, in a well-crafted story that kept me turning the pages until the very end. 4/5⭐️—I liked it!

A great novel with a great title, which is featured in the opening fable told to a granddaughter by her grandmother, HOW THE ONE-ARMED SISTER SWEEPS HER HOUSE is a wonderful debut from Cherie Jones. The story revolves around a group of people whose lives are entwined after a robbery gone wrong in Barbados in 1984. It is a rough book, full of frustrating characters and heartbreaking losses. We are transported to Barbados, and back in time, and the story is powerful and intense.

I really enjoyed how Jones mapped out the book, with multiple perspective and timelines. It allowed for a rich story and it unfolded in unexpected ways. The worst part of the book is wanting justice for the women in the story, wronged over and over by the same man who affects their lives in horrific ways. The book doesn't give the reader that though, but makes the story true to life, and it does have an explosive ending that stayed with me. Can't wait to see what else Jones has to offer in the future!

I absolutely hate DNFing a book, but my expectations were pretty high for this book because it is a popular book club’s pick for February. It was hard to follow and unfortunately, it was not for me.

Gorgeous. Beautifully written, thought-provoking, and just generally one of the most absorbing reads I've encountered in months.

I’m judging a 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

The storytelling is exquisite… excited for the world to learn of Cherie Jones. “The tunnels is where bad men go when they die, says the mother, men that are too bad to rest easy in their graves down in those tunnels walking about night and day, looking for more badness, harvesting souls for the Devil. The mother tell them, but the little girl with the good sense listen and the one that don’t have any get more curious than ever. This sister question her mother, wonder what in the tunnels that so sweet she warning her away from it, because this good-for-nothing girl already developing a taste for things that her mother tell her not to have, this slack-from-she-born, force-ripe sister already thinking that some bad things real sweet and if something so sweet it can’t be evil. This sister thinking to herself, It not that dark, it not that spooky, what is the use of a tunnel if you don’t get to see where it lead?”

This masterfully written novel is revealed layer upon layer as generational trauma, misogyny, and power dynamics force the main character, Lala, to cope, resist, and ultimately come to terms with the need to take back her power and save herself. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House is stylistically intriguing and invites the reader to experience the grit of Lala's life as her truth is revealed. Set against a backdrop of Barbados, with all the patois and color of the tropics, it is one of the strongest narratives I have read and I highly recommend it.

Advanced readers' copy provided courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Content warning: incest, rape, physical abuse, infanticide, murder

Hard to put-down. Set in Paradise (Barbados). Visit the islands and see how some of the residents live in the shadow of great wealth and privelege.

This is a brutal indictment of how poverty begets violence, and violence begets poverty, and how the culture of violent, controlling masculinity damages not just those who experience the brunt of it but also the society at large that surrounds and feeds it. Jones's novel delves deeply into the history of Barbados--its status as a colonized location and culture--and the history and functions of race and class and gender on the island. Nearly all of the characters have experienced trauma that informs their lives, and much of the plot relies on how each has coped--or not coped--with these traumas. Jones's voice is clear and original and she is an excellent storyteller, and I think this will become essential reading in Caribbean literature.

Thank you Little, Brown and Company, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC ebook copy of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, by Cherie Jones. The review is my own honest review. Set in
Barbados, this story is one of the poorer class, native islanders, and the rich vacationers that inhabit the beach houses part of the year. It is not told in a light-hearted beach-read fashion, nor is it an island romance novel. While there are relationships and a bit of true love, most relationships are damaged, often due to the lengths that the islanders go to to try to better their lives. Drugs, prostitution, and larceny, peppered with violence, abound. I enjoyed reading this book, watching Jones craft a tale with many angles, and looking forward to seeing how she tied everything up in the end. The ending was a disappointment for me. If it hadn't said "End", I would have thought the book didn't finish loading. It wasn't really a cool twist that made me say, "Oh!" It just left me with so many questions, lots of loose ends. Maybe left open for a sequel ...maybe?

A beautifully written novel of love and violence set in Paradise. The story focuses on Lana, the latest in a lineage of women who have become ensnared in a cycle of domestic abuse, her criminal husband, and the ex-pats he targets.

Set in Barbados, a novel featuring career criminals, victims of violence, and rich ex-pats. Violent, sad, and horrifying, but so well-written and so real that you have to find out what's going to happen next.

Book Review for How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
Full review for this title can be found at: @fyebooks on Instagram!

Damn. I haven't read such an impressive novel in awhile. Cherie Jones can spin a story. The narrative and prose of this novel was incredible. It's rare that I think I'd like to hear the author read this book to me, but with this book, there were times I imagined hearing her voice, and that was part of what makes this such a successful novel: I heard the characters in my head. Jones doesn't just spin a story, she includes details of toenails that linger with you after you finish the novel, even though there was nothing dramatic about the toenails, it's how she makes us see how a gigalo remembers a client's nails, and how that alerts our senses are we read this rich novel.

This novel takes place in Barbados, a touristy island where the wealthy and impoverished more or less depend on each other for their needs. The main character is Lala, a young woman born to another young woman who was born to another young woman, and all the young women are treated like shit by the men in their lives, and the grandmother, Wilma, just can't muster the strength to protect her daughter or granddaughter from her vicious husband. The only man who really comes across as trustworthy in he novel is the foreign doctor who reaches out to help the women. Tone, who meet at 15, after he has been raped, loves Lala but fears her husband, whom is his childhood friend, a brute of a man. But Tone, when he remembers this rape, is also a violent man. No one can escape their past, yet, they keep trying.

The conversations between Wilma and her daughter and granddaughter, the way she forces them to sleep in the outhouse to protect them from her husband, are so deeply troubling while being so deeply familiar.

As the novel comes to an end, which I didn't want to happen, all the loose ends start falling in place, and there's a brief moment of optimism, yet, as readers, we wonder if Lala ever learns who is her father, ever returns to this island, if Tone's ever able to be free of the "Thing" that controls his life.

I will say this: After climbing the ladder to exit the pool today, I was glad a man offered me hand, and was reminded that not all men are so damaged and damaging as the men in this beautiful novel.

This was a DNF for me. Not sure if I read this at the wrong time, so I'll try again during the year. I will not post the DNF on a review.