THE DESPERATE CYCLE (Savant 2012) is Tony Tame's second dramatic novel of Jamaica, but the theme is not confined to Jamaican society. It examines the ways in which succeeding generations of people in what is loosely called "third world countries" handle, with courage, humor and resilience, the mountain of odds which history stacks against them.
This book does not treat any one participant in this "cycle" of inequality with particular distemper or sympathy. All the characters, from shifty politicians, to the harsh men of the law, to those who bear the ultimate pressure from their position at the bottom of the pile share elements of inevitability within their personalities. The reader is thus left to make his or her own decision about what made them the way they are, and, how, if they do, they will change in the future.
THE DESPERATE CYCLE traces three generations of a family who must survive with no inherited advantage. They confront and battle with environmental, social and economic forces the scope of which are so great that it is all they can do to work out survival techniques, and do it with ingenuity and often employing unusual "island" solutions and sometimes abject illegal behavior to avoid admitting defeat.
On another level, the novel constantly and subtly contrasts the absolute beauty of the island of Jamaica with the harsh reality of what it means to live in a physical Garden of Eden while dealing with the facts of human life in a paradise lost.
Sincerely,
Tony Tame
Author of
THE VILLAGE CURTAIN - A JAMAICA COLLECTION (Savant 2009)
THE DESPERATE CYCLE - A NOVEL FROM JAMAICA (Savant 2012)
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