Paule Marshall has written a monumental book. [The Chosen Place, the Timeless People] is by no means an unqualified success, but it has the virtues of its length of story and depth of commitment: complexity, the evocation of a people, characters whose lives we can follow long enough to see them through major decisions and major life-changes.
Set on a fictional Caribbean island, The Chosen Place, the Timeless People concerns the lives of blacks there who would like to move beyond the old strictures of birth and caste, and of whites who accept the conditions—and the conditioning—and of those who do not. Among those who do not is an expedition of social scientists from the United States—Saul, his patrician wife Harriet, and his assistant Allen. Dominating them all once they have settled in to begin studying the island's problems—dominating the novel, for that matter—is Merle…. Merle attracts Saul to a serious commitment to Bournehills. She leads the poor of the district in a near-revolt when their cane factory is closed down. She is, in her sensitivity and her violence, the poor of the district, and against her Harriet finally throws all her WASP force and is destroyed.
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