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Francisco Alvarez-Sanchez, a.k.a. Francis Sancher, the protagonist of Maryse Conde's novel Crossing the Mangrove, is a true catalyst; he transforms the lives of those around him while he himself remains unchanged. Conde's novel, originally published in 1989 as Traversee de la Mangrove, explores the impact of the main character's mysterious arrival, life, and death on the inhabitants of Riviere au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe. Sancher is a writer, and toward the end of the novel the reader finds out that the book he is working on is also called Crossing the Mangrove. Through reflexive irony like this and jokes about writers throughout the novel, Conde explores the role of the writer in what Jamaica Kincaid calls "a small place." In a recent issue of Callaloo devoted to Conde's work, critic Lydie Moudileno comments on artist characters in Conde's fiction, including Sancher: ". . Conde elaborates a system of representation such that on the one hand the artist serves to unveil the dynamic of . . . [his] communit[y], while simultaneously revealing his inability to represent that community."
Conde's achievement, as the "real" writer, is to "represent that community," and the fictitious writer's place in it, through the subtle and elegant organization of the novel. The book begins with the discovery of Sancher's dead body and proceeds as a series of internal monologues (some alternating with the narrator's voice, some not) by those who attend his wake. Sancher himself never speaks, except in others' recollections. The monologues/vignettes flow smoothly into one another and overlap, creating a multifaceted and sometimes contradictory portrait of Sancher and of the villagers. As the...