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The Village Curtain
The Village Curtain is a collection of fictional stories, sketches and imaginary characters set in the coastal communities of Jamaica. Considerable effort is made to make the physical and technical descriptions of the conditions and methods employed by village fishermen as precise as possible. This is based upon more than forty years of experience in this field by the author. The pieces gradually and gently introduce a range of “types” which populate these sea front places. The characters drift in and out of the narrative as the time line progresses, giving increasingly greater insights as to their survival techniques and their personalities.
The whole book is designed to expose the contradictions existing between what appears to be an idyllic and picturesque life and the actual struggle which these folks must wage on a daily basis and why their very culture has made them suspicious of intrusion from outside (especially official intrusion). However well-meaning these schemes and projects may be when conceived in theory, they must contend with local reality and an ingrained tendency to view intervention by anyone born outside the village circle with great caution.
This is not to suggest that this culture is inhospitable. On the contrary, there is a very genuine welcome expressed to all newcomers, up to a point. The problem is that many of the ways of staying alive in these marginal districts do not accord with formally sanctioned activities so the unwritten law of limiting access to intimate matters prevails.
Along the way you will meet a village elder who has mellowed but remains certain in his system of providing guidance and comment, disillusioned providers of charity, sometime drug smugglers and a man who thinks the best way to harvest the ocean is to throw explosives in it. There are lots of others, but that’s the kind of variety to expect.
A word on the weather. Throughout this assembly of semi-independent short stories the weather is a major element. It circumscribes almost everything that takes place on or near the ocean. People who try to make their living from the land or the sea will glance at the sky twenty times a day to read the signs which will guide them in this work. Every farmer, hunter and fisherman is an amateur meteorologist. I hope that I have been at least partially successful at bringing the smell of the salt spray at daybreak and rage of the hurricane into the general atmosphere of this book as well as the tranquil sound of a quiet, rainy night.
About the author
Born in 1943, Tony Tame has been associated with the marine industry in Jamaica since the mid 1960’s. After 1970 he became directly involved in the supply and service of equipment to the commercial fishing industry in Jamaica. His lifelong interest has been the methods used in various types of fishing and the people who work in this field. Still active in this field his fascination with these topics is undiminished.
He lives in Kingston, Jamaica with his devoted wife of thirty-nine years, Jennifer. Jennifer is Tony’s business manager. They have two children, a son Sean who helps to run the family owned company and a daughter Stephanie who is a senior lecturer in the Linguistics Department of the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
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