Juan Ruiz is a businessman, the eldest of three brothers who have created modest commercial interests in America, but in Dominica they are the local bigwigs who boast of much greater wealth and power than they actually have, particularly Juan.

Ana, the central character, has been married off at the age of fifteen to a suitor who is more than twice her age, who plans to take her with him to New York City. She described it as about the immigrant experience, of a young, naïve girl, moving from her rural home in the Dominican Republic (a small and at that time turbulent nation in the Caribbean Antilles that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti). When I heard Angie Cruz talking about her book I knew I had to read it. Both of the latter books were also Booker Prize shortlisted, Evaristo having won it (jointly with Margaret Atwood) in 2019.

It was a very strong field in 2020 (it always is!) which included Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet(the eventual winner that year), the final part of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other. One such event, in the past, has been the Women’s Prize talks, interviews with the shortlisted authors, but in 2020 we were all able to participate, and I even had a question answered! The National Theatre (like other theatres across the globe) had been doing this for years of course with its NT Live and Encore programmes where performances are streamed into regional cinemas, but everyone suddenly got in on the act and it was great! I do live near a major city (Manchester, England), but still most events in the publishing world take place in London. This was quite liberating for those of us living outside major cities lots of cultural outlets, whose activities had been shut down by the pandemic, were forced to seek new sources of income and found them by broadcasting live-streamed Zoom events which anyone anywhere could join. Most of us were under severe lockdown restrictions at that time, of course, and spending much of our social and cultural lives on video platforms. This book first crossed my radar when it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2020.

Angie cruz dominicana