In October 1983, Felicity Alexander, an internationally celebrated opera singer, is under house arrest in St. George’s. Grenada is in the midst of a military coup and on the precipice of an American invasion. Felicity has lied about both her name and her Canadian citizenship to protect her identity. Unable to return home, she wonders who the Metropolitan Opera has found to replace her in what would have been her first performance of Verdi’s La Traviata and what kind of gown the wardrobe department would have created for her. She lies on her friend’s couch, staring at the ceiling fan, while “the soldiers outside the window shouted commands to each other and the flames from their bonfire cast flickering shadows into the room.” As she imagines taking the stage, “the crackling crescendo of the flames collided with the music playing in Felicity’s head.”
Felicity is the complicated and engaging heroine of Zilla Jones’s propulsive debut, a woman at the height of her hard-won creative powers yet consumed by a lost love. Born in Manitoba to a Grenadian mother and an absent Ukrainian father, she learns in childhood that she has an otherworldly gift for singing and the necessary drive to follow that talent as far as it will take her.
The narrative shifts from the forlorn soprano trapped in the Caribbean to her adolescence in late 1950s Winnipeg, where she spars with her emotionally withholding mother, who is skeptical of her music lessons, and settles for an undeserving teenage boyfriend. When a post-secondary opportunity to study opera in London arises, she is happy to escape and embrace change. Just before leaving, she learns that her birth was the result of sexual assault. “She was a child of rape. Her mother had felt shame, despair, pain,” Felicity realizes. “Bearing her must have been the worst thing in her mother’s life.” The eighteen-year-old leaves for England with an upended sense of self.
London in 1965 poses a stark contrast to where and how Felicity grew up, affording her a kind of freedom and artistic growth previously unavailable; though “always grey,” it becomes a place to hone her craft, explore romance, better understand her identity, and engage with political activism. Felicity also discovers that England is a place of widespread racism: she struggles to get an apartment because she is Black, strangers sneer at her on public transportation, and her hair and skin colour are constantly scrutinized by her peers.
Felicity soon falls for the enigmatic Claude Buckingham, whom she will follow, whether physically or emotionally, for the rest of the novel. A member of the West Indian Students’ Association, Claude is a legal scholar and activist. After their studies, he and his friends plan to return home to Grenada to overthrow its corrupt dictator, Percy Tibbs. Despite the intensity of Felicity and Claude’s affection, their relationship is compromised by their individualism and diverging ambitions. The pair part ways after an ugly conflict that painfully mirrors Felicity’s mother’s ordeal: she becomes pregnant after being assaulted by another man, and Claude, in his anger, refuses to support her.
What is most striking about The World So Wide is its masterful pacing. Jones effortlessly takes us through the phases of Felicity’s rich life, including her return to Canada, the birth of her children, and her lacklustre marriage (which she agrees to for the sake of convenience), all while keeping the reader engaged and grounded.
Over a decade passes and Felicity’s star continues to rise, yet her frustrations and feelings for Claude refuse to abate, causing her to question all she has built for herself. By the late ’70s, she has made it to New York City and secured the lead role of Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Amid her success and even during live performances, her mind wanders back to her younger years in London: “She crossed downstage, travelled upstage left, returned to centre stage. Her body had learned the directions well enough to execute them without thought, leaving her mind free to dwell on Claude, for this aria was all about him. She had lost him but gained a career.”
As promised, Claude helps bring revolution to Grenada. By 1983, he has become a central figure in the new Black Pearls of Freedom government. Aware of his position, Felicity accepts an official invitation to sing in his country, hoping that they will be reunited. “The letter signified only one thing — Claude’s government, the one in which he was deputy prime minister, wanted her to come to Grenada. Claude wanted to see her.”
Felicity is not a likeable character in the traditional sense. She can be unrelenting and even unkind: a stereotypical opera diva falling victim to her own misguided choices and desires. But what she lacks in sympathetic qualities she makes up for in tenacity and perseverance, overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Facing relentless discrimination and humiliation, she is repeatedly told she is not enough. Still, she ascends further and further into fame. Her vulnerability lies only in her romantic life, which is haunted by memories of Claude. Although the invitation from Grenada seems “clueless” and “laughable” (it asks her to pay her own way), the trip feels like her only chance for closure. “Claude’s absence was the one hole left in her life,” she realizes. What starts as a promising visit descends into chaos.
The World So Wide is a deceptive romance. While the pursuit of a past love is, on the surface, the primary dilemma (“She had thought of her life with Claude as following the three acts of the operatic tragedy”), Felicity’s search for self-acceptance lies at the book’s core. The affection that she receives is largely conditional on her performance — whether personal or professional. After decades of navigating the various identities that have been projected onto, asked of, and denied to her, she must dismantle them all to find her true self amid the rubble.
The narrative eventually reaches a crisis point, both for the small island country and for Felicity. In the aftermath of heartbreak and violence, despite what she has suffered through, Felicity’s unbreakable connection to song remains. Jones has created a vibrant, memorable character whose confidence in her own talent has accompanied her through every misfortune and whose inner strength endures. When Felicity is singing, “she could almost believe that there really was a place where nothing and no one could hurt her.”
Stacey May Fowles has published five books. Her latest children’s title, Out of the Box, will hit shelves this fall.