“I am villain and hero, victim and victor.” This is how Kangkala, calypsonian and self-proclaimed “poet of the revolution”, introduces himself.
Trinidad is being tossed about on waves of change, as the 1970 Black Power rebellion sweeps through the citizens’ imaginations – including those of Kangkala and his “badjohn” friend, Sonnyboy Apparicio.
Kangkala is the narrator of Is Just a Movie; a refreshing take on omnipresent observation that has allowed Lovelace to exploit the Trinidadian vernacular without sounding unnatural. Sonnyboy is the hero – of sorts. He is hungry (starving, perhaps) for heroism, having been downtrodden by schoolmasters, absent parents and a community’s apathy towards a man with one leg shorter than the other.
The novel leaps back in time to Sonnyboy’s childhood, in a style reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude; the flavour of revolution, superstition and heroism is a common theme felt strongly in both novels.
The first time the young Sonnyboy encounters the force of Black Power spirit is when he is in trouble with the white school teacher – his mother’s counsel ignites a flame within him that characterises the rest of his life. Sonnyboy’s mother knows that “they so expect you to fail, they have a cell and a number waiting for you in the prison and a place to bury you when you are dead”. Her advice to Sonnyboy is that his “mission” is simple: it is “to disappoint them”.
Sonnyboys’ father, on the other hand, influences his son no less effectively, yet rather less directly. Lance, a husband more imbued with passion for the steelband than for his wife, stands a hero of sorts in his young son’s eyes, if only for his dedication to the steelpan. It is when Lance is let down by himself and his community that Sonnyboy’s attitude changes from one of youthful admiration to independent determination, repeated in a mantra never to be forgotten.
Sonnyboy’s adulthood is a mosaic of adventures and misadventures; a spell in prison and sweet love affair both playing out against the background of his steely resolve.
Lovelace has constructed a novel out of the delicate, yet magnificently colourful, scraps of human nature and folly that are often dismissed as mundane. Is Just a Movie is a masterpiece. - Lara Sadler