This book was so uniquely beautiful. I loved the plot and all its twists and turns. The characters and the world building was nuanced and unlike anything I had read before. I thought Ross did a beautiful job of creating Popisho, and dropping us into a day on the island.

The prose is beautiful! I hope this book gets all of the hype. Popisho sucks you in from page one and won't let you go until the book is over

Every once in awhile, I have the absolute privilege of running across a book that isn't just a book, its written art. Its a book so good the words run across your imagination and create such a beautiful piece you are truly sad when it ends. Welcome to Popisho.

Here, everyone is born with magic, or cors. And everyone's cors is different. Xavier Redchoose is the macaenus of his generation. His job is to cook each person one special meal once in their life. The meal is special only to that person and it changes their lives in ways only it can. While we follow his story, so many other stories are woven in as well. In a land where you can get drunk on butterflies, love in a house that knows your every thought and moves and works around you, and the dead come back to settle their scores with the living, nothing is as it seems and everyone has a secret. This book will make yoh laugh, cry, and gasp out loud all with equal measure. This is truly a work of magical art that I'm so glad I had the chance to read it. My only complaint is now ghat I've read it I can't go back and read it again for the first time. Five huge stars only because that's all the stars were allowed.

Thank you to NetGalley, Leone Ross, and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Leone Ross's novel Popisho delighted me and tickled me and amused me throughout, but it didn't move me. That's all right. No novel can do everything. The imaginative force of this novel is powerful and captivating. Reading it was a pleasure akin to a very good meal, maybe even a meal cooked by the magically talented chef, Xavier Redchoose, the "macaenus" of his generation who is gifted with the talent to make a perfect meal for everyone. I loved the way Ross took time to engage every one of my senses as she told her tale. It's a lovely, lilting tumble of a story.

Once in a while, I will come across a book that makes me reevaluate pretty much everything else I have read in the past. It makes me think, "Wow, how dare I rate X-book as five stars, when it pales in comparison to this?" I had that feeling once or twice in the past and I had it again not when I finished "Popisho" ("This One Sky Day" in the UK) but from the very first pages, when I was immediately swept into a world where ghosts come back to settle their scores, where trees dispense not fruit but fragments of poetry, and where people get drunk on butterflies just as easily as rum.

The thing with "Popisho" is that I could easily compare it to powerhouses of literary fantasies and (I know, I know this is a very loaded term) magical realism. In fact, this is perhaps the only book that deserves the comparison to "One Hundred Years of Solitude"; it is also the only book that has ever managed to recreate the almost transcendent atmosphere of Garcia Marquez's masterpiece. You know that sensation that yes, this world Ross has described is magical and thus unattainable beyond the realm of fiction, but something about the characters and the story also fills you with the certainty that if you only know where to go and where to look, you will manage to find it somewhere.

Still, while that comparison might be technically accurate, it feels if not unfair, in that I think all comparisons tend to have the potential of diluting the lesser known author's achievement. And what an achievement this is! A powerful love story that takes you by surprise, because it is not about romance, or at least not only. It's about community building, friendship, our relationship to the natural world, it is also a subtle and tongue-in-cheek critique of power and gender and colonialism, delivered with such panache that I alternated between laughing and crying. Ross's writing is poetic and like her story, steeped in Jamaican English and Caribbean folklore.

It's just... this is a fantastic story, with a cast of characters you grow to love and ache for, told by a master stylist that made me fall in love with reading all over again. What can I say, I am a sucker for a story about star-crossed lovers!

I have never read anything like this. I absolutely loved the writing and how rich and lyrical the prose was. I immediately felt connected to these characters. This story was touching, thought-provoking, and at times, funny. I highly recommend this wonderfully odd and beautiful story.

Set on a fictional archipelago reminiscent of the Caribbean where people are blessed with unique magical abilities (known locally as "cors"), Popisho tells a handful of stories of those who call the islands home. Each character's storyline becomes increasingly intertwined before the story's climax.

Leone Ross' skill at characterization is on full display and her love for the culture she creates in these pages is palpable. This book is truly one about senses - yes, in the more obvious contexts of taste, sight, touch, smell, and sound but also the sense of place, of meaning, of hope, and of the future.

In the beginning, I had no idea what I was reading.

A bit about myself: I am not a consummate reader of magical realism; however, I do enjoy a touch of the uncanny.

On an island, somewhere, every person is born with a touch of magic. Someone with the gift of healing. Someone else with the gift of detecting lies. Someone with wings inborn in their bones. And there's this exalted position of a Macaenus, a cook, or a food artisan if you prefer for someone with the gift of fashioning taste and smells. And it is the duty and privilege of a Macaenus to cook the people of the island a meal they'll never forget. But the Macaenus is nothing more than a star-crossed lover with a traumatic past. And on the one day he is supposed to cook a feast for the island in honour of the daughter of the governor's wedding, weird things start to happen. Women drop their intimate parts. Opposing slogans to the governor start to appear on the walls. The toys from a toy factory disappear.

This book was a scherzo of sensations, full of life and zest. Hilarious, highly imaginative, yet so real and at many times relatable.

The Torn Poem Restaurant was located on a cliff above the harbor with a view of the islands of Popisho. "Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something extra. The local name was Cors. Magic, but more than magic...a gift...from the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own...Cooking Cors were rare as hell in a man...but...Xavier could flavor food through the palms of his hands. Xavier's old friend Entaly had musical earlobes and three buttock cheeks".

After grueling training as the acolyte of retiring Macaenus Des'ree, Xavier was elevated to this exalted position. As Macaenus, his task was "to cook a meal for every single adult man and woman on Popisho. To delight a whole nation with his food...He tried to ignore it all: the worship, and the disapproval and the expectations". Xavier maintained a random guest list. "No one skips the line. No special treatment...". A letter from Governor Intiasar arrived addressed to Xavier Laurence Redchoose-the 413th Macaenus, announcing his daughter's engagement, requesting that Xavier prepare a traditional wedding night meal. Not so fast, governor!

It used to be part of the Macaenus's duties to perform a walkround for purchasing the necessary ingredients for a feast. "Look, Macaenus! Some of the traders he recognized from their bartering techniques...He felt like a dancer, back in the arms of a former partner: old friends with intimate half-forgotten memories. They worked hard, these people: farmers, bakers, butchers. He'd spent 20 years building relationships with them for the first pick of their freshest produce.

Sonteine Intiasar, the nervous bride to be, had a brother, Romanza. Disowned by their father, ZaZa had found happiness with Pilar, an indigent from the Dead Islands. Zaza became Pilar's acolyte and lover. The indigent people wore scant, frayed clothes...most had lost their capacity to blink and live in houses. They ate fruit, veggies, tubers, insects, occasional meat-and poison.

Intiasar was seeking another term as governor. Apparently a rival had been painting signs of criticism, exposes of rundown buildings and complaints of lower wages. A single missive, in orange paint, was posted everywhere "What's Your Alternative?"

"Popisho" by Leone Ross is a delightful romp into the world of magic realism. Xavier Redchoose was haunted by the ghost of his dearly departed wife and remorseful for not marrying his one true love. Strange occurrences abound. The toys from the Dukuyaie Toy Factory had disappeared. Women's private parts were falling out. A storm was brewing. Change was in the air. I highly recommend this imaginative, hilarious, mournful, playful read.

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't know where to begin when it comes to this story! There were moments when I asked myself what did I just read and others when I was simply on the verge of crying. As much as magical realism took over the lives of all Popisho residents and their individual stories, it was a big fat allegory of today's world just like Animal Farm was for the time it depicts.

Everyone in Popisho had a magical touch, something that made them stand out compared to others, called cors. Xavier had it for flavors and he was destined to give each members of Popisho community the meal of their lifetime when it was their turn. But annoying governor decided to force Xavier to break his rules and prep a wedding meal for his daughter. It turned out this was not the only place where he was acting like a politician that he was.

The amount of magical and unbelievable things happening in this place goes head to head with tragedies and heartbreaks people facing. While everyone was blessed with a talent to make others jealous, everyone had trauma that held them back: Xavier fighting his heart, Anise fighting her womb, governor's daughter fighting her innocence... Once the fluffy layers outside were peeled, the story was simple yet powerful reminder of human survival and push to find alternative!

A wildly imaginative and, yes, magical novel. The world of Pooisho is filled with magical realism and political fables and a strong cup of feminism.

Leone Ross speaks of lovers who teach you all kinds of flavor in her acknowledgments. I can assure you that this book shows you as many flavors as there are cors (magical gifts) on Popisho. It has never been clearer that every person is unique. Some are right for you and others aren’t, but they all bring color to your life. It is up to you to choose the right person.

Reading this book feels like exploring a lesser-known part of the world. Popisho would be the perfect travel destination, with the passionate and gifted but flawed natives of the archipelago as your guides. This is the only land where moths are the new drugs and you can get rid of a man by folding him like a piece of paper and drop him far away on the beach. The narrative is wildly imaginative and at times you will wonder what you are reading.

The people in Popisho try to overcome addiction as they deal with love and relationships, and all the weird things that the exotic archipelago throws at them. If your most intimate body parts can fall off anytime and you live to tell, then you know that you can adapt. And that is one skill that you need to have if you want to live on Popisho.

Leone Rosse wrote such a fun and entertaining story. Enjoy the ride and go wherever it takes you. Popisho is a book unlike any other. It is magical and absurd, sensual and down-to-earth. The only drawback for me was the use of (Caribbean) slang and grammar to illustrate the exoticness of the islands, as it made reading more energy-consuming. But other than that, I loved the story.

The characters are interesting – I especially liked Anise, Xavier, and Des’ree – and the events are as far from boring as it gets. You might not always be able to follow what is happening – I didn’t – but that doesn’t matter. Only Popisho natives will truly understand this story about love, addiction, and choices. So I encourage you to read this book (and to take a good look at the amazing cover). I mean, what’s your alternative?

Popisho
In the midst of an already chaotic year, this book came into my life (thanks @netgalley and @fsgbooks) - and I just had a TIME with it!!
Popisho is an island, and a world. It is a concept and a feeling. It is the thread between every protagonist of the novel, and it is a political statement. In Popisho, people have cors - god-given gifts of healing, cooking, and catching lies. Cors are their folly and their reason to live - with their life’s purpose arranged from childhood, the people of Popisho are left instead to finagle with drama and destiny.
To open, we meet Xavier, a maceanus who has the gift of cooking exactly the right thing per person...when the time comes. His wife Nya has surrendered herself to the sea, but throughout the novel we are left trilling between whether it was an accident, suicide, or homicide. Xav has been commissioned to cook for the governor’s daughter Sonteine, out of turn of his ability. Meanwhile, Anise has discovered a cheating husband and Romanza has been disowned. In between all this, Ross zooms out to the political climate of Popisho - which is in tumult.
The first hints of upcoming chaos on Popisho are when mysterious yellow graffiti emerges - they interrogate Popishans (sp?) with the know-how of Big Brother and the heart of a revolutionary. Then, at exactly 12 noon, the “pum pum” of every woman falls out - some are bouncing in the streets, stolen by peeping Toms, or secured into locked drawers until they can be re-attached. That’s right, when all women find their vulvas spontaneously detached, the government passes an edict that all sexual intercourse must halt for 24 hours until a solution is reached. *GASP*
This 24 hours turns into a witching hour - we get the feeling of a storm stirring as warm western winds meet the eastern ones. Popisho is on edge. Yet, with spry storytelling and boundless imagination, Ross tackles heavy subjects like addiction, grief, and broken hearts with a lens of joy. It brought curiosity and playfulness into my life, frosted with unapologetic feminism, and rich mythology baked from scratch.
As amazing as these characters seem, this book has earned a forever spot on my bookshelf for one other reason - Leone Ross has a cors herself. She spreads words onto the page with artistic genius. She is a composer of the page. Her word choice is eccentric, but she creates cadence and character in fonts. I’m telling you people - this book is a best-kept secret at the moment. There is nothing else like it.

This was an amazing read. I struggled at the beginning with the language, but once I settled in with it, I felt as if I was listening to an actual storyteller telling me this amazing tale. I wish I had read this in a college class or a book club—I feel as if there were whole layers of the story underneath what I read, and would love to talk about it with others to tease out more of the richness that is there.

If you like magical realism (because there is plenty here), I highly recommend this book.

Thanks to Farrar Strauss & Giroux for providing me with an advanced reading copy via NetGalley.

I was really into the premise of the book Popisho and love the look of the cover. In theory, this book sounded creative and unique. However, it was honestly a struggle for me to get into this book due to the way it was written. I never really felt engaged with the characters, but did still find the overall story interesting enough to keep reading through to the end.

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.

This excerpt is from page one but it’s by page one that I often feel deeply… this is gonna be one helluva book. I’m excited by the prose. I can’t wait to read the rest of this novel. The writing alert and sensitive. The type of writing that makes me pause, hold the book close to my chest, sigh, slow down, and draw out the reading experience because I never want it to end. “When people died alone, without proper burial rites, the carcass wandered for years, rudderless, rotting and shrinking. They had all seen these ghosts, rebuilding their bodies with bits of rubbish, hanging on, half-maddened. People who died alone: heart attack, stroke, old age, sleep-and-dream-and-dead. Fall and lick your head on a rock. Poverty. Murder. Suicide. Drowning. People whispered behind their hands. All of them dead of the same thing, you know. Loneliness.”

Xavier Laurence Redchoose, the four hundred and thirteenth macaenus, has just lost his wife Nya who was brought home already lifeless. And with that, Leone Ross begins to bring us into Popisho, a place full of magic where everything could happen. Besides Xavier, the story revolves around Anise Latibeauderre, the daughter of a Christian pastor, and Romanza Intiasar, the disowned son of the Governor in Popisho. At first, it sounds as though each of the character’s story would be told to us independently, but turns out that they’re interrelated.

Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something-something boys, a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah? Yes. From the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own. (Loc. 261) — — Each character is described in their own unique ability called ‘cors’ which they obtain upon birth. And it is from each character’s ‘cors’ that the magic in Popisho takes shapes in the story.

Leone Ross is keen on inventing every single myth in Popisho from scratch. She paints an imaginary place, with characters who have uncommon names and uncanny abilities. And even the problem that Popisho women had to face is rather disturbing to me, as their pum-pum begins to fall and Governor Intiasar issues an order to ban any sexual intercourse for 24 hours until the pum-pum of his daughter could be found. It brings the sense that everything is possible in Popisho, an island that we could never fully comprehend.

In the midst of the yelling, Sonteine had given as good as she got-after all, it was she who climbed into Dandu’s bedroom, and she who let him look between her legs and how was it his fault that the blasted thing have to fall out right that minute, especially now she knew it wasn’t just her it happen to? (Loc. 3281) — — Somehow it sounds amazing to me that the author could describe something sexual without bringing it out explicitly, as though the act of sexual intercourse between Popisho people is something sacred and holy rather than taboo.

The vivid description of Popisho is something to be praised, coming from the author who has spent her formative years in Jamaica. However, I feel a bit conflicted about the way the author describes Popisho. The words screamed out to me as though they beg for me to read them fast with fluidity as when I read any works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, yet it requires a slower approach to understand the description of Popisho and its citizens. Much more so due to the (intentionally) grammatical mistakes here and there which might be written that way in order to create an exotic aura, yet makes my brain thinking harder upon reading.

At first, it seems like the kind of book that I’d like to read, given the rich characterisation and description. There are certainly many things to praise from this book. However, I read it during a busy week that I might have missed a lot of details inside this book as the story got more intense. Maybe I’ll have some changes of thoughts in the future when I reread it at a more convenient time.

This is one of those books I wish I could discuss in a university classroom. There’s so much to break down and probably a lot that I missed. The writing is so vibrant and rich that it’s just begging for a conversation.
It’s beautifully and lyrically written. It’s playful and magical.
I didn’t want to say too much, because I believe it best if you just let this world absorb you. It’s hard to explain, but if you love getting lost in a story, this could be one for you.
I loved is story and cannot wait for more people to read it!

At a glance, Popisho should have been a novel I loved. It is a work of full-on magical realism, and the blurb sounded enticing and exciting. Certainly, I can appreciate what Ross was trying to achieve, and there were elements I enjoyed, such as the general concept and the characters. However, I really struggled to engage with the prose. To be fair, I read this during a super busy week while I was trying to finish everything for both my jobs before the holidays, so perhaps I was simply too tired to give the book the attention it needed. I simply couldn't relax into the cadence of the language and sink into the story, though, which made it a jarring read for me. It just didn't click. I have seen some very positive reviews for this book, so if you are considering reading it, please don't let my more negative comments put you off from giving it a try. I am perfectly happy to admit that this may simply have been an issue of bad timing. Perhaps I will try the book again in the future, to see if I get on better with it then, but for the present it is a 2.5-star read for me because I liked the idea and other aspects but found the prose style too much of a slog.