A Life Shaped by Love, Loss, and Resilience

Title: Sylvie’s Love and Loss

Author: Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith

Year Published: 2024

The last time I spoke to retired political science professor Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith was the start of 2024 when his book Challenged Sovereignty: The Impact of Drugs, Crime, Terrorism, and Cyber Threats in the Caribbean was published in which he focused on the threats of international drug crime and its deleterious effects across the region. Now, to close out the year this prolific writer has published yet another book — Sylvie’s Love and Loss. But, he has taken a huge leap with this one. This latest publication is his first novel, and more specifically, a romance novel.

EMOTIONAL

Yes, it is set in the Caribbean and there is a similar drug theme running through it, but we are also entertained and ultimately pulled into an emotional story that fascinates and moves us closer to the characters. There are no brutal statistics of international drug gangs who use Caribbean islands as transhipment points. Instead, we get the sensitive story of a young woman’s path through life, and loves, who gets caught up in the web of drug trafficking.

In a conversation with Caribbean Today, Griffith explained that the novel is loosely based on an actual encounter he had with ‘Sylvie’ (name changed for obvious reasons) on the small island of Grenada back in 1994 while doing research for a scholarly work on drugs in the Caribbean, which was ultimately published in 1997. The perfect setting for a different kind of story, the author vowed to revisit the experience through a novel someday.

“The back story for this novel actually is connected to my scholarly academic work. It goes back two and a half decades when I was working on another project and had this astounding experience in Grenada. And I said then, I'm gonna have to write a novel about this whole thing when I retire,” commented Griffith.

Well, so said so done. We are introduced to Sylvie and her family through the eyes of a visiting scholar (Griffith perhaps?) on a trip to the island of Grenada. Like so many families across the Caribbean, they are of modest means, hardworking, with ambitions to better life. Sylvie’a life is marked with loss from an early age through parental abandonment. But, with the love of Ma-Ma Roberts, the larger-than-life maternal figure in this story, Sylvie and her younger siblings find balance. Things go well for Sylvie as she lands a job in the tourism sector that promises to take off. But, her path would be set when she got the opportunity to migrate to Canada that would careen into life-changing losses leading to deportation.

So authentic, so tragic is her story that we ‘feel’ for Sylvie. We want her to crawl out of the gutter she has landed in. We want her to ‘come back’. And, she seemingly does with a new love, Rastaman an educated agriculturalist from Jamaica.

LANGUAGE

Part of what gives the real feel to this novel is Griffith’s use of language and local culture. We ‘hear’ the differences in the Grenadian creole, the Jamaican Patwa, the Trinidadian sing-song cadence in the characters words that is sprinkled throughout the book. The flora

and fauna indigenous to the island comes alive as we walk through gardens. We learn about the special herbs used to contain and cure illnesses through the wise elders we meet. In fact, explained Griffith, some of the characters are drawn from his own network of experiences, some personal experiences, some family experiences. For example, Ma-Ma Roberts, one of the central characters in the novel, is very much like his own grandmother who was a market vendor and a grandma to many in need.

“I wanted to reflect some of the vernacular local language. Our region is rich in language, not only in English or Spanish or French or Dutch or Papiamento, but richness in the Creole,” Griffith noted.

The rich musical legacy of the region is also invoked through lyrics from icons like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh to young contemporary influencers like Koffee through her hit song Toast praising gratitude and blessings. Griffith specifically chose this song (Toast) as a metaphor. For although Sylvie experiences unending negatives in her life, it is blessings that gets her to the other side.

Sylvie’s Love and Loss is a mix of memories, sociology, anthropology, geography around a complexity of characters. Said Griffith: “The overall thrust of the book, novel though it is, is to reveal some of the warts of our region, of our societies — North America, Caribbean, Europe — in relation to drugs. And it's as much a sociological society issue as it is an individual Sylvie challenge.”

By the end of the novel, we know that Sylvie must go in search of her past, which will reveal even more sociological entanglements. So, a sequel is definitely in the making. Yes, the author confirmed that he will begin writing it sometime next year. But, in the meantime Griffith continues his scholarly writing. Indeed, once an academic always an academic it would seem. But, readers will be glad he can easily step out of that box sometimes.