by Monique Roffey
Right after they marry in England in 1956, Sabine and George Harwood move to post-independence Trinidad for a job that George has been offered. Fifty years later they’re still there. Now both in their middle 70s, George is, as he’s always been, happy with his life and loving his adopted country, while Sabine has never been able to adjust to the oppressive heat and the culture of the island. Monique Roffey’s The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Penguin, 2011), which was a finalist for the Orange Prize, switches back and forth between time periods and narrators (so that both husband and wife get their say). In 2006, when George finds a cache of Sabine’s old (and unsent) letters to Eric Williams, Trinidad’s charismatic prime minister, it sets off a series of events that will shake the foundations of their marriage. But the true main character in this novel is Trinidad itself: its people, its customs, and its contradictions. Roffey’s explorations of longtime marriages, race, and the lingering effects of colonialism are insightful and often painful to read.
