Port of Spain, Trinidad – Trinidad & Tobago serves as the idyllic backdrop for the novel, Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange, which made Oprah’s 25 Books You Can’t Put Down.
The 2009 summer reading list appeared in the July edition of O magazine and Oprah.com. Written by Amanda Smyth, the Irish-Trinidadian author uses images from her childhood and paints the picture of Celia, a young girl in the 1950s searching for love, identity and a place to call home.
Published in paperback on June 30, 2009, the novel starts out in the sleepy Black Rock village in Tobago and transports the reader to the cosmopolitan city of Port of Spain. Below are sample reviews of the novel:
“The Caribbean’s tropical sights and smells permeate Smyth’s moving debut novel, but all is not paradise…Smyth paints a vivid portrait of a naïve young girl who learns some hard truths about herself and her family, but though Celia’s story is not always happy, it’s arresting and powerful, a shining testament to human resilience.” —Miami Herald
“Like Alice Walker, Smyth vividly and empathetically re-creates the gender and racial tensions in a culture’s past, making them newly relevant.” —ELLE
