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A Novel
by Andie Davis
A restless New York artist searching for purpose returns to Barbados and stumbles into the role of activist in this scathingly funny and brilliantly observed satire about privilege, family discord, and performative do-gooding.
Dark, lanky, and bald, New York–raised photographer Sabre Cumberbatch can't tell if she's highly talented or just highly Instagrammable. Up to here with art critics and their gaseous praise, Sabre returns to Barbados, her childhood island home, to water her roots. She needs to quell self-doubt by doing something―anything―profoundly important.
Welcoming her with bejeweled open arms is her aunt Aggie, a fearsome high-society attorney eager to show off her famous American niece. When Sabre witnesses Aggie unleash her wrath on the household staff over a minor mistake, Sabre finds her cause. During an interview for a puff piece about art, Sabre goes off-script and takes a righteous stand against the tyranny of the ruling class―starting with Aggie.
Overnight, Sabre throws her family and an entire island into chaos. How many ways can the best intentions go wrong? They're racking up. But tingling with purpose, Sabre is counting on the ways they just might go right.
"A wild ride that kept me turning pages. Barbados and its culture are richly drawn with Davis's deft wit, as is the fascinating cast that populates this astute debut. Sabre Cumberbatch―charmed and hapless by turn, always well intentioned―flees New York, the land of her artistic fame, and returns to her childhood home of Barbados with the simple aim of finding herself. Sabre is anything but simple, however, and it isn't long before her magnetism and ambition provide a spark to an island that is primed to ignite." ―C. J. Washington, author of Imperfect Lives
"A fun and timely lens on contemporary Barbados. It is impossible to visit the Caribbean and not bear witness to the damage done by colonialism. What is our capacity to dismantle these structural vestiges? Reading this deceptively breezy novel, I felt for Sabre as she struggled to come up with the right answers―she certainly was asking the right questions." ―Stephanie Black, filmmaker, Life and Debt
This information about Let Me Liberate You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Andie Davis's curiosity about other people's lives inspired her love for languages and her travels around the world. Born in Montserrat, Davis grew up in Barbados before moving with her family to the US, where she attended Howard University and Harvard Law School. She works as a global development advisor focused on sustainability. She lives in New York City.
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