All Decent Animals

"Kempadoo is extraordinary. She breaks old stories, makes them anew."—Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of This Is How You Lose Her


"Kempadoo draws her characters and settings with such vivid strokes that her language leaps off the page . . . Her words create an infectious riot of rhythm and color."—Jerome Boyd Maunsell, The Times (London)


"[Kempadoo] has shown herself a writer to watch and to enjoy, for her warmth, her fine intelligence and her striking use of language."—Paula Burnett, The Independent

"Over the last 15 years, Kempadoo has established herself as a preeminent writer of Caribbean fiction . . . Kempadoo's narration alternates between the formal language of international development and a heavily dialectized slang, to create a creaolized island English. Together with references to local rhythms like calypso, kaiso, and soca, the effect is of sheer saturation, as seamlessly coupled as night jasmine and passion fruit, with certain scenes nearly synesthetic in their blending of sensory impressions. Yet even a climactic and mysterious encounter between lovers grows dark, wrapped in bitter seaweed and plunged in salt water."—Diego Báez, Booklist