The Polished Hoe

by Austin Clarke

Book Overview

When Mary-Mathilda, one of the most respected women on the colonized island of Bimshire (also known as Barbados), calls the police to confess to a crime, the result is a shattering all-night vigil. She claims the crime is against Mr. Belfeels, the powerful manager of the sugar plantation that dominates the villagers' lives and for whom she has worked for more than thirty years as a field laborer, kitchen help, and maid. She was also Mr. Belfeels's...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060555653
• ISBN13: 9780060555658
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Amistad Press
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Slow read with way too much repetition.

This book wasn't for me. I gave it two stars because the author took the time to write it. I see other reviews... I'm not from the Bahamas... but I can tell when a books timelight isn't correct. No one should write like Faulkner but Faulkner. Which I find ironic when considering theme of book.

Excellent book for Caribbean Literature Studies

Although some reviewers suggest this book to be slow moving, it represented quite alot to me. Being a Barbadian, educated at the primary and secondary level in Barbados- it was refreshing to actually have a taste of Barbadian history in literature, as apposed to European and American history. The world is becoming a cultural melting pot and we have to remain open to different styles of writing and storytelling. Those looking for a fast moving, suspense filled book of crime and passion will not find it in "The Polished Hoe", instead they will find a common West Indian and African American story of love and pride inspite of hardship and the vestiges of slavery. It discusses the ramifications of slavery, which are still being felt by blacks all over the world in 2005. I believe this book would be an excellent book to be studied in schools in the West Indies and for those doing black studies worldwide. Forgetting our past has already made us comfortable with a present that still begs for change.

A Startling Confession

The story is the confessional statement of Mary, a West Indian Field laborer, given the day after her revenge castration and murder of the plantation overseer. She'd been his mistress since chilhood-assuming the role her monther once had. Although well provided for with material things, beautiful home, servants, the best education and opportunities for their illegitaimate son, Mary suffers unconscionable sexual, and psychological abuse from this man. Her statement of the crime is given to the islands' police sargeant, her chilhood friend and lost love. In its telling, the tragedy and brutality of West Indian plantation life in the aftermath of slavery is revealed. The tragedy is amplified as we come to see its effects on generations of Mary's family and the whole islandcommunity. Beautifully written with interesting parallels drawn to Black life in Post World war America.

If you know the Caribbean ...this is a Novel for you

An old woman, mistress to a white plantation master is confessing a murder she has commited. She also confesses the thousand little murders that she has gone through in being the man's mistress. Like old women around the world, she rambles through time..present and past intermingling with the stories of the people she tells the story to.This is one of the best Caribbean books to date

Rum-soaked Caribbean cadences

Almost mimicking the sense of time on a West Indian island, this mesmerizing novel begins slowly and then warms up with the Caribbean heat of noon's overhead sun. Now an old woman still living on a big-island plantation, Mary-Mathilda, in the process of confessing something having to do with the 'hoe' of the title to the local cops, reminisces about her past, chronicling the plantation's history as well as her own. The novel explores the brutality of plantation life not in the fields but in the Big House where as a girl, Mary M caught the manager's eye and became his mistress, the mother of his only son. Separated from her own people by her comforts and privilege, she is also separated from the white establishment by the barriers of racism, servitude, and sexual exploitation.