L'île au poisson venimeux by Barlen Pyamootoo (review)

Is it possible to disappear into thin air in the light of day on a small island? This is the question that Anil Ramloll's friends and family ask themselves after he goes missing one day after lunch, never returning to his shop, his wife Mirna or his children Ashok and Kamla. He disappears "comme par magie" (97), leaving no trace. Has he died in an accident, been kidnapped, or, as one friend suggests, been used in a ritual sacrifice on an island where,"beaucoup par ici, même parmi les notables, croient que ça existe encore, la sorcellerie" (44–45)? Search parties are organized, hypotheses generated, and a half-hearted police investigation initiated and closed, all with no results. Eventually, Mirna must let go of Anil to forge a new life for herself and her children. However, on such a small island how easy is it to start over? Throughout the novel, Pyamootoo shares his Mauritian home through an engrossing prose. He pulls the reader onto the island through meandering sentences that offer vivid descriptions and craft a deep sense of place and longing—two elements essential to the plot's development and unravelling. Mirna's initial anxiety at the thought her husband may be dead is palpable and as Anil's absence draws out, her desire to see him again ebbs and flows, evoking feelings of hope, fear, and anger. Following along the paths of those searching for Anil, the reader has the sense of walking through the dark streets in which the sounds of rats loudly echo. As the title forewarns, not all is beautiful in this supposed tropical paradise. The island's portrait here is one of mystery, suspicion, and evolution. Each character lives with a strange attachment to a murky past, subsisting on secrets and memories of what life used to be. Anil, his friends, and his extended family are deliberately ignorant of the future, trying only to simultaneously resist and keep up with the rapidly changing present. Modern phenomena such as AIDS, climate change, the influx of cheap consumer goods, and the dilution of traditional culture combine to create a sense of contemporary anxiety that underscores Anil's disappearance. His absence thus exemplifies the unanchored identity of all the characters that populate this novel and who, according to Anil's friend, are living as "étrangers dans un monde qui n'existe plus, mais avec lequel nous ne pouvons rompre" (45). The denouement of Pyamootoo's haunting narrative at times leaves readers wondering if it is ever possible to separate oneself from one's past and forge a new life or if we are doomed to live under the sometimes-unbearable weight of our own memory.