A Cupboard Full of Coats, Yvette Edwards's debut novel, is a slow-burning heartbreaker of a story, rich with the cadence and flavor of Caribbean immigrants in London's East End.
Jinx Jackson lives alone in the house where her mother was murdered by an abusive boyfriend. She has no friends, she is unable to connect with her young son or his father, and her only solace is in her work as an embalmer. Then Lemon, once a friend of her mother and still handsome, sharply dressed, and smelling of rum and tobacco, brings upsetting news: Berris, her mother's killer, has been released from prison. Bound by their mutual complicated love for Jinx's tragic, beautiful mother and shared guilt over her death, Jinx and Lemon begin the slow work of unraveling their painful history.
Before her mother died, a traumatized Jinx was moved to tears by Lemon's simple affection. "Most things, all they want is a little gentle handling," he said to her once. Fourteen years later, Lemon once again provides, melting her icy defenses with captivating stories, foot massages and powerfully nostalgic West Indian food.
The food works on the reader, too; in fact, Edwards's sumptuous descriptions may be the best thing about the book, rivaling only those of the luxurious coats that hang untouched in Jinx's closet--the consolation gifts Berris gave her mother after every beating.
With elegant restraint and sensitivity, Edwards unfolds two stories--the circumstances of Jinx's mother's brutal murder and her redemption and release 14 years later--while nudging them toward the same emotional conclusion. --Hannah Calkins, blogger at Unpunished Vice