{"id":43297,"date":"2015-10-17T01:34:13","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T01:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43297"},"modified":"2016-12-04T02:16:29","modified_gmt":"2016-12-04T02:16:29","slug":"the-pain-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43297","title":{"rendered":"The Pain Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cormorantbooks.com\/9781770864344\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Pain Tree<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cormorantbooks.com\" target=\"_blank\">Cormorant Books<\/a><br \/>\nJune 2015<br \/>\n320 pages<br \/>\n5.5\u2033 x 8.5\u2033<br \/>\nPaperback ISBN 9781770864344<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.olivesenior.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Olive Senior<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cormorantbooks.com\/9781770864344\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cormorantbooks.com\/2013corm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/9781770864344.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Olive Senior\u2019s new collection of stories, <em>The Pain Tree<\/em>, is wide-ranging in scope, time period, theme, locale, and voice. There is \u2014 along with her characteristic \u201cgossipy voice\u201d \u2014 reverence, wit and wisdom, satire, humour, and even farce. The stories range over at most a hundred years, from around the time of the second world war to the present. Like her earlier stories, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jamaica\" target=\"_blank\">Jamaica<\/a> is the setting but the range of characters presented are universally recognisable as people in crisis or on the cusp of transformation.<\/p>\n<p>While most of the stories operate within a realist mode, Senior also exploits traditional motifs. Collected here are revenge stories (\u201cThe Goodness of my Heart\u201d), a bargain with the Devil (\u201cBoxed-in\u201d), a Cinderella story (\u201cThe Country Cousin\u201d), a magical realist interpretation of African spiritual beliefs (\u201cFlying\u201d) and a narrator\u2019s belated acceptance of the healing power of traditional beliefs (\u201cThe Pain Tree\u201d). \u201cCoal\u201d is a realist story set in the war years and depression that followed as folks try to find a new place in the world. Senior\u2019s trademark children awakening to self-awareness and to the hypocrisy of adults are here too, from the heartbreaking \u201cMoonlight\u201d and \u201cSilent\u201d to the girls in \u201cLollipop\u201d and \u201cA Father Like That\u201d who learn to confront loneliness and vulnerability with attitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pain Tree Cormorant Books June 2015 320 pages 5.5\u2033 x 8.5\u2033 Paperback ISBN 9781770864344 Olive Senior Olive Senior\u2019s new collection of stories, The Pain Tree, is wide-ranging in scope, time period, theme, locale, and voice. There is \u2014 along with her characteristic \u201cgossipy voice\u201d \u2014 reverence, wit and wisdom, satire, humour, and even farce. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,21,8,15],"tags":[21439,80,18221],"class_list":["post-43297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-novels","tag-cormorant-books","tag-jamaica","tag-olive-senior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43298,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43297\/revisions\/43298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}