The Boiling Season: A Novel

By Christopher Hebert

An ambitious young man struggles to define himself and his future while his Caribbean homeland plunges into a violent revolution, in a novel that recalls Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day: Hopwood Award-winning writer Christopher Hebert’s The Boiling Season. A passionate, intimate exploration of one man’s loss of innocence and reclamation of identity, this compassionate and compellingly character-driven novel will speak to readers of Barabara Kingsolver and J. M. Coetzee, as Hebert’s illuminating and visceral portrayal of a popular insurrection against an all-powerful dictator—a backdrop that echoes events in Haiti—beautifully translates the struggles of our contemporary world into a work of soaring and unforgettable literary fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Feb 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9780062088536

Christopher Hebert

Christopher Hebert graduated from Antioch College, where he also worked at the Antioch Review. He has spent time in Guatemala, taught in Mexico, and worked as a research assistant to the author Susan Cheever. He earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and was awarded its prestigious Hopwood Award for Fiction. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his son and wife, the novelist Margaret Lazarus Dean.

Reviews for The Boiling Season

[gary237 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christopher Hebert's first novel is a story of the development of an intelligent man born into poverty on a Caribbean island. Alexandre is ambitious, and as an adolescent escapes some of his poor status by working for a wealthy lawyer with government connections. Alexandre's father, a poor shopkeeper, does not like this fraternizing with the rich but tolerates it because he supports Alexandre's initiative.The story becomes a reinforcement of the idea that success is due largely to people you know. In his role as chauffer, Alexandre meets a manager in a hotel in the main town of the island who helps him on his mission to escape his rural poverty. The manager helps Alexandre to become the chief caretaker of a long neglected compound that preserves a section of the island unspoiled by the ravages of civil strife and environmental destruction. The compound has a long history as a large opulent estate, but Alexander finds the land in a natural wild and uninhabitable state. The old buildings, once elegant, are now overgrown and crumbling.Alexandre's employer, the new owner of the estate, is a very successful US businesswoman who has bought the compound because of its natural beauty. She wants to create a hotel that will rival exotic destinations for wealthy travelers throughout the world. Alexandre works for years on the estate, using Mme Freeman's money to make the estate a beautiful retreat from the pressures of the world. He gradually loses his connection and identification with his roots in the poor native caste. His father never fully opposes his work but shows resentment of Alexandre's working with rich outsiders.The story is an interesting parable about the endless cycle of struggle between the rich and poor throughout the world, even in paradise. For decades, Alexandre immerses himself in work in his compound and lives an idyllic life in isolation, but the grand cycle of human desire for dominance inevitably overtakes him. He is forced to realize that utopias are relatively short-lived and he must take a moral stand and live in the reality of the world to develop fully as a person.The Boiling Season is an interesting story told by Alexandre who becomes an increasingly insightful participant observer in the world's repetitive grand circle of survival, contentment, social climbing, economic achievement, resentment, encroachment, strife, and revolution. Whenever two or more of us are gathered in the name of society, the struggle continues and Alexandre shows us that each person must choose a personal myth.

[rabbitholler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although there are flaws that the author might acknowledge himself, this work became a pageturner well before the halfway point. I often felt as though I were reading a fairy tale: there is a hidden garden behind a locked gate, the man and the woman, a parent-child relationship to repair, and a narrator who doesn't relate to people so much as encounter them by chance. But Haiti (as most readers identify the setting) is no place to live in a fairy tale. For me, a former sojourner in Haiti, that was a premise I shared with the author, and found his examination of the effects of history and culture on character fascinating. The protagonist says somewhere near the end that it may be his destiny to be invisible--is this the destiny the world assigns to this beautiful and self-destructive place?

[texicanwife_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Alexandre spent his childhood in the slums of a Caribbean island rife with political unrest. Determined he could be so much more than those about him, he struggles everyday, for his entire life, to be better.But eventually, the strife about him catches up, and he finds out his roots aren't that far from the worst about him.I couldn't put this book down. I found myself hoping for the best for this young man. Feeling empathy toward him. Wanting him to succeed.I give this book Five Stars and a big Thumbs Up!****DISCLOSURE: This book was provided by Amazon Vine in exchange for a non-biased and independent review.The review copy was an uncorrected proof, and as such may differ from actual sale copies.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As Alexandre explains, the poor people, the slums are on the bottom of the hill, the higher you go the richer they are. Alexandre wants nothing so much as to escape the poverty he was born to, with that in mind he accepts a job from a senator first working as a houseboy and than as the senator's chauffeur. Although this is an unnamed country in the Caribbean, I believe it is Haiti, and the unstable political system with coups and constantly changing dictators have much to do with this novel. Eventually Alexandre leaves the senator to become the manager of a beautiful old Habitat, a wonderful place of green and beauty, amidst all the uncertainty and he is sure he will end his days happily shut away. Alexandre is immensely likable, if somewhat naive, and he quickly learns that sometimes you don't have to seek out trouble, but that sometimes it comes to you. What he does when this happens, is unexpected. He learns that it is harder to escape your past than one thinks and I thought the ending fit perfectly with his character. Another very good book by a first time novelist.

[garyseverance-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christopher Hebert's first novel is a story of the development of an intelligent man born into poverty on a Caribbean island. Alexandre is ambitious, and as an adolescent escapes some of his poor status by working for a wealthy lawyer with government connections. Alexandre's father, a poor shopkeeper, does not like this fraternizing with the rich but tolerates it because he supports Alexandre's initiative.The story becomes a reinforcement of the idea that success is due largely to people you know. In his role as chauffer, Alexandre meets a manager in a hotel in the main town of the island who helps him on his mission to escape his rural poverty. The manager helps Alexandre to become the chief caretaker of a long neglected compound that preserves a section of the island unspoiled by the ravages of civil strife and environmental destruction. The compound has a long history as a large opulent estate, but Alexander finds the land in a natural wild and uninhabitable state. The old buildings, once elegant, are now overgrown and crumbling.Alexandre's employer, the new owner of the estate, is a very successful US businesswoman who has bought the compound because of its natural beauty. She wants to create a hotel that will rival exotic destinations for wealthy travelers throughout the world. Alexandre works for years on the estate, using Mme Freeman's money to make the estate a beautiful retreat from the pressures of the world. He gradually loses his connection and identification with his roots in the poor native caste. His father never fully opposes his work but shows resentment of Alexandre's working with rich outsiders.The story is an interesting parable about the endless cycle of struggle between the rich and poor throughout the world, even in paradise. For decades, Alexandre immerses himself in work in his compound and lives an idyllic life in isolation, but the grand cycle of human desire for dominance inevitably overtakes him. He is forced to realize that utopias are relatively short-lived and he must take a moral stand and live in the reality of the world to develop fully as a person.The Boiling Season is an interesting story told by Alexandre who becomes an increasingly insightful participant observer in the world's repetitive grand circle of survival, contentment, social climbing, economic achievement, resentment, encroachment, strife, and revolution. Whenever two or more of us are gathered in the name of society, the struggle continues and Alexandre shows us that each person must choose a personal myth.