Celeste Mohammed on Pleasantview: A Novel in Stories: Fiction

Celeste Mohammed is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. Pleasantview (Ig Publishing) is her novel-in-stories debut. Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and Coke. To outsiders, these idyllic images represent the so-called easy life in Caribbean nations such as Trinidad and Tobago. For those who live there, the reality is far different, and Mohammed reveals a society where poverty and patriarchy savagely rule – and love and revenge often go hand in hand. It’s the dark side of the Caribbean dream. Writing in a combination of English and Trinidad Creole, she sets the stories in a fictional town in Trinidad. We meet a political candidate who sets out to slaughter endangered turtles for fun, while his rival candidate beats his “outside woman” so severely that she loses their baby. On the night of a political rally, the abused woman exacts very public revenge, the trajectory of which echoes through Pleasantview, ending with one boy introducing another boy to a gun, and an ideology that will help him aim the weapon.