For a short time, when you begin reading Monique Roffey’s latest, Passiontide, you might be reminded of Elif Shafak’s masterful, 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World. Reason being, a young woman is killed and we hear from her as she sits atop the mighty tree that provided her final resting place.
But Passiontide is not (just) the story of the woman who is killed. Our gradually unwinding tale is refracted through a number of different perspectives – from Sharleen, a hardnosed journalist who has reached breaking point over the vast number of unsolved murders, to her childhood friend Tara, a pink-haired, straight-talking star of the activism scene; from Gigi, the ‘notorious’ founder of the Port Isabella Sex Workers Collective, to Daisy, the loyal first lady of St Colibri, who is haunted by a disappearance in her own family decades ago.
The largely male establishment that governs St Colibri – from Inspector Cuthbert Loveday to the mayor to Daisy’s other half – seek to dismiss the murder (blaming the victim for what she was wearing), and it’s the final straw. What follows is a revolt that is both intimate (the women of the island go on sex strike) and gladiatorial (an Occupy situation develops that quickly riles the powers that be, leaving them curiously powerless to act).
“Never, in her life, had this type of gathering assembled, of its own accord. This lookin like a sweet mayhem and had its own way. This was soul force.”
Dark subject matter aside a moment, it’s worth saying, to begin, that Passiontide is a veritable carnival of a book. Yes, it’s built on murder – on murders, many murders, swept under the carpet – but it thunders with righteous fury. From Roffey’s rich and vibrant language (Passiontide is a book that often had me scurrying for the dictionary to find out what certain words (picong, flambeaux, wajang…) meant and every word I looked up felt enriching to me) to the characters that roar off the page. This is a book to luxuriate in but also, and crucially, it feels like a book to be shared.
Passiontide has a way of crashing, so many waves atop the other (just as my critical instinct leapt on Shafak at the start, there were times I was reminded of Percival Everett’s The Trees too, the way in which a writer can be comic about something utterly devastating – but again and again I had to tell myself that Roffey is no one’s understudy, she is utterly herself and as much of a force for good and for difference as either Shafak or Everett).
“As she would write for the big important American newspaper later: let no one judge this island. No single narrative here is the official truth. What happens here, happens everywhere.”
Yes, it has a message,
“Right was always right. Right asserted itself no matter who was the messenger. These women were right. Femicide must stop. These women needed some help.”
But Passiontide is never heavy handed, never lecturing or hectoring. Passiontide is a book you want to be part of. A book to celebrate alongside.
“People had the power to provoke change, together. And here it was.”
And yet, as Roffey writes in the closing acknowledgement, the story is based on truth, at least in part (no woman reader needs to be told that, I’m sure), and the novel closes in such a way so as not to reassure. Darkness remains.
If there is any justice, this book puts Roffey on a multitude of awards lists this year, makes a household name of her, has people camping out to return their Sally Rooney books in order to fill their shelves with Roffey’s entire back catalogue. If there is any justice, 2024 is the year that Roffey moves up the league table quite a few steps.
Any Cop?: Passiontide is an absolute gem, a smasher, a corker, a book to raise the roof. Do not miss it.
Bookmunch 