Denise Haynes’s TALENT SHOW is a novel structured as a memoir, with Eddie Roberts speaking from beyond the grave to offer the story of his life as a husband and father in Trinidad during the 20th century—and with it the larger story of the family itself. “The collective memory of a large family does not exist,” he writes, noting that the experience of each child is different. Some remember strict, energetic parents, while younger siblings enjoyed more freedom and fewer rules. Some recall aunties, family friends, scandals, and stories that the others never heard about.
Through it all, the parents often remain partially hidden, their inner lives a mystery to their children and their decisions often inexplicable to them. Eddie recounts his courtship of Suzy, challenging due to his status as an “Anglo” (a descendant of English colonizers) and not a “Catho” (Catholic). Suzy’s father, Carlos, is a rough, judgmental man; but when Eddie and Suzy become accidentally pregnant (a scandal the kids surely never suspected), they receive his grudging permission to marry. Over the ensuing decades, Eddie describes caring for his family, his wife, and his career. His children take over the story later on, often expressing amazement at what they’ve learned.
Haynes writes with energy and clear, direct sentences that capture the flavor of Trinidad society, but Eddie’s story of his family often moves too fast and overlooks the details—resulting in a story that feels more like a listing of events. For example, at one point Eddie breezes through the births of four of his children in a single line: “Suzy was also very fertile and before I knew it, Cristina, Benjamin, Eduardo and Margarita were born.” While these kids do get some attention later in the narrative, this kind of rushed, bland introduction keeps them as just names on the page for much of the story.
This undermines the central metaphor of the novel. The idea of a large family as a talent show of sorts, where each child gets a limited opportunity in the spotlight—limited attention, limited affection, limited resources—is an interesting one. But Haynes doesn’t introduce the idea until the second part of the novel, when the kids take over the narrative, and it’s only intermittently explored. The impact of this division of parental attention and the constant fight for that spotlight would be fascinating to explore, but (even when the kids get to address the reader directly) the idea isn’t given much time to develop.
Ultimately, the glimpse of life raising a large Catholic family in a changing Trinidad is interesting, and the exploration of the dynamics of a large family holds a lot of promise. Ironically, the story suffers from the same problem as a “talent show” family: there are so many characters that few get enough attention to become living, breathing people on the page.
Denise Haynes’s TALENT SHOW offers an interesting glimpse of both the culture of Trinidad in the 20th century and the dynamics of a large family.
~Jeff Somers for IndieReader