“Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory and like nothing you’ve read before. These are the stories that we never believed could be told, until Jonathan Escoffery told them.”  That’s from Marlon James, another Jamaican writer who was educated at the University of Minnesota and won the Booker back in 2005. This was for A Brief History of Seven Killings,  I loved that book and my review is on this site at https://mybecky.blog/2016/04/18/a-brief-history-of-seven-killings-by-marlon-james-x2/ . 

If I Survive You
By Jonathan Escoffery 
2022 /  (272 pages)
Read by Torian Brackett 8h 1m
Rating: 9 / contemp immigrant fiction 

If I Survive You is the debut novel of Jamaican author Jonathan Escoffey who, like Marlon James, was educated at the University of Minnesota and whose debut novel made it to the Short List for the very prestigious Booker Prize. (Winner to be announced November 26.) 

This delicious novel consists of 8 separate but interwoven short stories told in a generally chronological order, and sometimes featuring different members of a slightly extended immigrant family.  (In other words. it “reads like a novel.”) 

Every year in the US the “new release” shelves have a dozen or so very good immigrant novels. This seems to have gone on since the Europeans started settling here.  (Can I call it a diaspora?)   I always enjoy a really good immigrant story no matter who’s coming to the US. 

The title of the book, If I Survive You, is wonderfully ambiguous because who in the world is/are “You”? At first it seems as if Trelawny is directing the comment to himself, the first person narrator who frequently talks or thinks to himself, asking and telling himself different things about the world and family. .  

The “Survive” part of the title is that as Trelawny’s stories unfold, they seem like one real, and almost existential, struggle after another both for him and for his family.  Kids from school, neighbors, parents, and then bosses, girlfriends, teachers, general buddies, the 2008 economy, and scam artists of one sort or another all present serious problems. His older brother, Delano, along with their father Topper, present some real difficulties for Trelawny and then there’s his cousin Cukie. Too often Trelawny has to survive Miami itself what with the weather and the hurricanes which tear through the coastal city disrupting the family’s lives, their home, and threatening the land itself. Surviving all this is neither simple nor easy.

The thing is, it’s never a sad book although quite unhappy and frazzled in places. Escoffery shows a joy in telling the stories in which he displays his talent for characterizations, word play with some ironic kind of humor thrown in. Yes, there is a lot of tragedy in the stories, but it’s never really “tragic” feeling.   

The opening story, In Flux, is a great kick-off for the following eight stories, Trelawny is about age 5 or 6 and has trouble fitting in with the kids around Miami as he was born shortly after his parents and brother immigrated from Kingston Jamaica where political violence had become a norm. There are many immigrants in Miami and they brown ones, like Trelawny, almost always speak Spanish; but not Trelawny. Jamaica’s official language is English, but they also speak a patois and have a distinct accent; but not Trelawny. So is Trelawny Black or White? It’s not the same distinction as it is in Jamaica, but in the US it’s considered quite important to virtually everyone.

Trelawny’s voice is the voice of the younger son of an immigrant couple from Jamaica who came with their first-born, Delano. Trelawny is born in south Florida where they buy a run-down house and fix it up a bit – see it blown to bits by Hurricane Andrew. 

It’s a nicely structured novel, with the essentially stand-alone stories ordered to create a loose story arc stretching over 30 years or so. But I think they are much better read in order

Torian Brackett does an excellent job of narrating – it added to my enjoyment.