THIS ONE SKY DAY

RELEASED OUT NOW! 468 pages | Hardback/ebook

Author Leone Ross

Publisher Faber

This is the sort of book that gets reviewers wheeling out words like “smorgasbord” or “cornucopia”. We’ll go with “kaleidoscopic”. This One Sky Day is a feast for the senses – and the heart – in novel form, full of colour, taste, smell and sensation, described in gloriously rich prose.

The archipelago of Popisho is a fantasy Caribbean: sun, sea, magic, a history of slavery and speech peppered with Jamaican Patois, from broughtupsy (manners) and gyal (girl) to obeah (witchcraft) – no surprise, given that Leone Ross grew up in Jamaica. We follow the central characters – a healer who can’t heal herself, a rebel who feels physical pain when he hears lies, a chef who can change the flavour of food with just a touch of his bare hands – as their lives collide over the course of a single climactic day.

“Climactic” is another very apt word. There are climaxes galore and, ahem, they aren’t all metaphorical. Alongside chef Xavier’s irresistible food and physical settings so vivid you can practically feel sun-baked tiles under your feet, Ross’s story is disarmingly, delightfully frank about bodies, sex, and all the variously heartbreaking, uplifting and ludicrous stuff that goes along with them. Meanwhile, a subplot involving people across the islands simultaneously losing a bit of their anatomy is both hilarious and weirdly liberating. Recommended.

Nic Clarke