A Month of Novellas, Book 16:The International Shop of Coffins - Tiphanie Yanique (2010)

down in the tropics, a.k.a. our library

I was immediately intrigued by the name of this story The International Shop of Coffins. I’ll confess to having a bit of a morbid streak and of having read a couple of funeral related tomes in my time. So when this title popped up in one of my many research lists, I quickly reserved it at the New York Public Library. I was also interested in it because not too many of the novellas I found were written by women of color and Tiphanie Yanique is a Caribbean woman to boot.

This very small novella was broken up into three parts, each one a version of the same story, but each part concentrating on one of the participants.

It starts off with Simon Peter Jatta’s story, a local priest who is friends with the shop’s owner Anexus. They keep each other company in the shop in between clients. The shop is international in that it imports designs from abroad to supplement the more traditional types of coffins. So in addition to plain pine boxes, Anexus keeps a hefty marble coffin on display as well as little ones shaped like sneakers for small children. As Simon Peter and Annexus converse, two young girls from the island come in to the shop. They’re obviously there out of a morbid curiosity of their own but they lie to the men and say that they’re doing a school project on mourning.

After they leave, we get to find out Simon Peter’s back story and how he came to be a priest. He’d started out as an apprentice to a wood carver and through no fault of his own had practically been disowned by his parents over a sexual attack.

Then the story starts over again and we get to find out about Anexus Corban and how he came to have this shop. His story to me was the hardest to believe, a ‘love’ story that was a little too ridiculous for even a romantic like me.

And then we get to have the story start over a third time, but this time we get to meet Gita “Pinky” Manachandi, one of the girls who’d wandered into the shop at the very beginning. Her story to me was the most crushing and effective of the three, with a surprising and tragic end.

I’m not sure I really enjoyed the re-telling of the story at the beginning of each part , although it was interesting how tiny little details would change like who the plain pine coffin was meant for, as if it was a giant game of telephone. But Ms. Yanique has a gift for description and by the end I felt like I’d been in the islands and had myself visited Mr. Corban’s International Shop of Coffins.