Surrounding Gayl Jones is an aura of violet lithe … Palmares is an odyssey, one woman’s search first for a place, and then for a person … Jones writes in ancestral tongues, shifting between languages, going from dialogue to dream-speak, fever to prophesy, sometimes midsentence … This book takes patience. Time sometimes stretches, sometimes collapses in on itself … Jones’s writing is most potent when it blends the ethereal and the corporeal, as if it comes from some celestial place … Her oracular integrity comes into question, however, when she introduces characters who are lesbian or gender nonconforming. … What can explain these scenes? They are filtered through Almeyda’s eyes, and we learn early on that on the plantation, Almeyda has been raised Catholic, presumably to believe homosexuality is a sin … Mercy, this story shimmers. Shakes. Wails. Moves to rhythms long forgotten. Chants in incantations highly forbidden. It is a story woven with extraordinary complexity, depth and skill; in many ways: holy … The story ends not exactly in medias res, but on a beat that begs continuation. This feeling of masterpiece-in-and-as-process is deliberate, and genius.
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