I felt like a kid, working her way through fear, lying in the park on my tummy, deliberately swinging my legs, trying to connect with my young, rebellious self who just loved words, and didn’t worry about judgement. The only way back towards the novel was to free-write – writing without stopping or judging in one long stream. Worried that the work was good enough, but nothing special. I published two novels in my twenties and then got terribly seized up about the form. It allowed me to finish the damned thing! It was an entirely pragmatic choice. Science and Technical Research and Development.Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities.Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives.Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development.Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance.What can an “innovative” approach offer the reader (and writer) that a more conventional novel might not? The Goldsmiths Prize was set up to reward fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”. Ross’s book is a work of rich and unpredictable magic realism that explores pressing contemporary themes including postcolonial politics, queer love and substance abuse.

Xavier is a “macaenus”, an individual gifted with the ability to flavour food through his palms Anise is a healer who learns of someone’s ailment just by touching them. On Popisho, everyone has a “cors”, a magic power that is unique to them.

The book tells the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers on Popisho, a mythical Caribbean archipelago. Ross’s third novel This One Sky Day (Faber & Faber) was published 12 years later, in April 2021, and is shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Her first novel All the Blood is Red (1996) was nominated for the Orange Prize her second novel Orange Laughter was published in 2009. After graduating from the University of the West Indies, Ross returned to England, and she now lives in London. Leone Ross was born in Coventry in 1969 and migrated to Jamaica with her mother when she was six.

Popisho review