An uplifting read

Sweetness in the Skin
Ishi Robinson

The story this novel tells is a familiar one: its young protagonist, Pumkin, is given the opportunity to escape the life into which she was born – to escape from poverty, ‘the wrong postal code’ in Kingston, Jamaica and an abusive mother. Pumkin is plucky and resilient, determined to study hard and, using her flair for baking, raise the money she needs to join her aunt in France. There are, as you would expect, some obstacles along the way, making for a gripping but ultimately feel-good tale.

The novel—as such novels do—also explores the tension that such a transformation can bring. Those around whom she’s grown up, especially her mother and best friend Tamara, view her potential social ascent as a betrayal. Pumkin herself negotiates guilt, resentment and frustration. One character, Boots, sums it up particularly well; he explains to Pumkin that ‘everybody have dem place and dat is de place dem have’ but that ‘when yuh in de middle, and yuh have a chance to move up, you don’t wanna do nutten to fall down in the other direction. You don’t wanna give anybody a reason to question your place’. This is, Pumkin discovers, hard work. Hiding her origins is exhausting, leading her to worry that other characters ‘could smell my otherness on me […] could sniff out the truth of who I was: an imposter’. As Boots remarks, ‘always trying to be someboddy else’ makes one ‘well tired’.

These are well-worn tropes, yet the novel executes them with a freshness and energy that make it a compelling read. Moreover, its passion for food makes it distinctive. As I mentioned earlier, Pumkin bakes to make money and the novel’s descriptions of her creations, and they delight they bring, are wonderful.

A fantastic novel. I gobbled it up.