Salt published prizewinning poet Pascale Petit’s debut novel My Hummingbird Father on 15 September 2024
To buy from publisher HERE
To order from Amazon HERE
Announcement in The Bookseller:
Salt lands Petit’s ‘haunting and topical’ novel My Hummingbird Father, Read HERE
‘I am in love with this book! Haunting, grotesque, lush and strangely tender. A stunning debut novel, afraid of nothing and deeply poetic.’ —Warsan Shire
‘My Hummingbird Father shatters and heals, distils redemption out of a history of pain and abuse, and is one of the most affecting books you will read this year. Petit’s jewelled sentences, rich in imagery and inspiration from the natural world weave tiny, beautiful lessons from sparrows, captive jaguars and broken humans together into a stunning, unforgettable tapestry.’ – NILANJANA ROY
‘Petit is a passionate laureate of the natural world, but alive to the cruelty of human
depredation’ – AINGEAL CLARE, THE GUARDIAN
‘It’s unsurprisingly poetic, full of lyrical, luscious descriptions of the rainforest and shot through with magic realism. I loved it.’ —Sara Lawrence, Daily Mail
SYNOPSIS
Pascale Petit’s My Hummingbird Father is a beautifully lyrical debut novel in dialogue with Pascale’s Ondaatje and Laurel Prize-winning poetry collection, Mama Amazonica.
When artist Dominique receives a letter from her dying father, a reckoning with repressed memories and a pull for romantic and familial love sends shock waves through her life, as she journeys to Paris to face the places and events of her early years.
Balanced with visits to the Venezuelan Amazon, where Dominique explores a spiritual and loving longing (meeting a young guide, Juan), a raw and tender unfolding of this love story is a parallel to the uncovering of the shocking truth of Dominique’s birth, and her parents’ relationship.
‘I wrote my novel after time spent with my estranged father in Paris, and in the otherworldly landscape of the Venezuelan Amazon. The city merged in my mind with the remote Amazonian plateau, Devil’s Mountain. This fictionalised story seeks redemption for a father but also juxtaposes an unspoilt landscape onto Paris, and vice versa, twinning abuse of women and children with abuse of the earth’ – PASCALE PETIT
REVIEWS OF THIS BOOK
“In this haunting and hypnotic first novel from the award-winning poet, life imitates art and art imitates life… Petit skilfully weaves a gorgeous tapestry of prose. The juxtaposition and superimposition of landscapes and geographies, past and present, the human and natural worlds, words and images, the French concrete jungle and the Amazonian forest, make the “days merge into one another”. The many worlds of the novel collide, even eclipse one another. Set between London, Paris and the Amazon rainforest, it’s the story of a painter, Dominique, who hasn’t seen her father in more than three decades…Written in four parts and short chapters, My Hummingbird Father disentangles the relationship between art and abuse, and is shot through with epistolary elements and diary-like entries. Dominique is determined to “paint what hurts until it’s better. She can change the past with art. What would she do without art?” The novel is a redemption song and an ode to the lost innocence of childhood. Petit’s writing is as vivid as Dominique’s brushstrokes: here, there’s a forest full of fluttering, buzzing, rustling; there, Paris’s rues and boulevards, gargoyles and church bells. The author peels back layers and layers, only to reveal more secrets, losses, traumas.” – Sana Goyal, The Guardian, 24 October 2024 Read the full review HERE
‘The overall imaginative vision behind this rich and compelling tale is both a concrete journey of transformation and, through the riches of its lucid, dramatic, highly evocative telling, an allegory about what art is for. The wilderness of our wounds and suffering can be transcended by the loving care of the imagination – not as escape, but as the distiller and giver of the essence of flourishing human well-being.’ —Omar Sabbagh, Everybody’s Reviewing
‘Protagonist Dominique is 37 when the father she hasn’t seen for 30 years makes contact to tell her he is dying and wishes to see her. Despite him walking out and disappearing when she was young, Dominique rushes to Paris, where he lives. She is full of questions but he is too ill for confrontation so they begin an elaborate conversational dance that weaves from the present to the past. Answers are dispensed like clues and the genteel urban setting is juxtaposed with the unspoilt jungle, where artist Dominique finds inspiration. It’s unsurprisingly poetic, full of lyrical, luscious descriptions of the rainforest and shot through with magic realism. I loved it.’ —Sara Lawrence, Daily Mail
PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK BY PASCALE PETIT
‘Beautifully sad, the imagery inexhaustible, the sorrow and torment both tempered and
sharpened by the relish for language and the ingenuity of the imagination.’
SIMON ARMITAGE
‘Mama Amazonica stitches parallels between the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and
a mother and daughter’s experience of mental illness. We felt that in creating this duality
she might have achieved what should have been impossible.’
MONIZA ALVI, JUDGE, THE LAUREL PRIZE
‘She has a powerful, imagistic authority over the landscape.’
DALJIT NAGRA, FRONT ROW, BBC RADIO 4