A Shadow in Yucatan by Philippa Rees

which, throughout this book
of poetic narrative interspersed with colourful dialogue, is
palpable and often beguiling
    I can’t help
hearing Richard Burton’s silvery intoning of ‘the webfoot
cocklewomen and the tidy wives’. But this is not to detract from
Rees’s individuality, which, throughout this book of poetic
narrative interspersed with colourful dialogue, is palpable and
often beguiling. She is prone to the lingering aphorism that is
imaginatively her own – ‘The cradle of compassion lies in an open
palm’; ‘Nights are cloth soup silence’; ‘…alone in triptych of
frescoed gilt…’ – and the unforgettable image – sometimes oblique,
but still workably so:
    Lethargy, that
toothless crone, skims perpetual
indifference from the cream of richer care.
    For my part, I
read A Shadow in Yucatán mainly for its poetry, its play with
language, image and sound, rather than strictly trying to follow
the actual narrative. Approaching this book with a sort of Negative
Capability, I experienced it in terms of descriptive impression,
verbal effect. In this respect, A Shadow in Yucatán is disarmingly
beautiful

    Independent
Reviews Self Publishing Magazine
    The back blurb
calls ‘A Shadow in Yucatán’ a ‘distilled novel’ and it is –a home
brew, raw and omnipotent! Rees makes extraordinary the sorrowful
ordinary of an unwanted pregnancy and the resulting difficult
decisions. She celebrates the sense of community, despairs of
family and counts on the generosity of strangers. She explores
problems and finds solutions – hard through they are to take – in
unexpected places
    Through it we
enter a world as real as we are, but as foreign to us as a bad
dream. This book is a must for any intelligent reader!