The past 10 years have seen many feminist uprisings, from the #MeToo movement to the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran in 2022. Each event has forced the world to reckon with patriarchal forces that leave women disadvantaged, assaulted and murdered. Yet femicide rates still rise. Thousands of Kenyan women took to the streets in January in a demonstration against gender-based violence, while recent data suggested that Black women in London face a higher rate of femicide than any other demographic in the city. The question of how and when things will change is at the core of this novel by Monique Roffey, the 2021 winner of the Costa book of the year for The Mermaid of Black Conch.
Set on a small fictional Caribbean island called St Colibri, which is still grappling with the legacy of colonialism, Passiontide addresses this epidemic of savagery. It starts with the brutal murder of Sora Tanaka, a Japanese tourist who came to the island regularly to play steel pan during the annual carnival celebrations. “I shout but no sound comes. My throat was hurt, choked,” her ghost says. Her body is found on the savannah under a cannonball tree. It’s Ash Wednesday, the morning after carnival, and she is still wearing her bright masquerade outfit. (The story resembles the real-life murder of Asami Nagakiya, killed in Trinidad in 2016.)
After Nagakiya’s death, Trindad’s then mayor made comments about the vulgarity and lewdness of carnival, and that women had a duty to not get abused. In Passiontide, St Colibri’s mayor makes similar remarks at a press conference. “A young woman, late at night, alone, almost wearing nothing. Yuh know?” His words ignite an uprising headed by sex worker Gigi, women’s rights journalist Sharleen and local activist Tara. Women gather and occupy a square in the centre of town. They bring tents and set up camp, build shrines and hold up placards. Their movement and associated hashtag #AmINext escalates.
Passiontide is excessive in places, with scenes and characters that leave the plot disorganised, but Roffey does a fine job of depicting a rebellion. How rage turns into motivation, ideas into action. The messy logistics of having to wash yourself in a public toilet while you’re demonstrating. The quick-thinking use of press coverage. The necessity to adapt your goals by the hour. The group issues demands to the government that include: a formal apology to Japan; for the lead police inspector to be replaced by a woman; and for tougher legislation on domestic violence.
Roffey’s narrative crumbles, however, when the women decide to withhold sex and encourage the “whores”, the wives and the churchgoers of the island to do the same. Even the prime minister’s wife, overcome with grief over her own sister’s murder decades earlier, announces on TV that she, too, is partaking in the strike, much to her husband’s despair. But this glorification of the boycott undermines the points the novel makes about bodily freedom. Using sex as a bargaining tool reinforces the idea that there is a correlation between a woman’s sexuality and patriarchal violence. Now the onus for preventing murder committed by men is dependent upon the celibacy of women.
In short, then, Passiontide has its weaknesses. Still, it’s written with urgency and captures that grinding frustration of wanting progression in a world that always prioritises “bigger fish to fry” over dead women. This uprising was never going to end femicide in St Colibri, but its leaders’ perseverance brings their island’s shame a little further into the light.
• Passiontide by Monique Roffey is published by Harvill Secker (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
