Booklife Selects MAGNA as its Editor's Pick

A Booklife Review

This intricate blend of history, socioeconomics, and memoir follows the life of Reynolds’s mother, Philomene, who grew up on St. Lucia during the Great Depression. Through her eyes, Reynolds explores the rich history and culture of St. Lucia, foraging insights into life, death, and the challenges of raising children along the way. Reynolds delves into his upbringing and the societal forces that shaped him as well, touching on themes of mortality, sacrifice, and purpose, as he charts his mother’s transformation, in her later years, from a “proactive, industrious woman” to one “totally dependent on others.”

A heartfelt reflection on personal and shared history, Magna imparts timeless lessons on resilience and meaning. Reynolds (They Called Him Brother George) honors his mother with a realistic but touching presentation of both her shortcomings and accomplishments, recognizing, in spite of the lasting impact of his abandonment trauma—an aftereffect of his mother moving to England to join his father, leaving him, and his siblings, behind during early childhood—the values she imparted to him: discipline, hard work, inner resolve. “To be in my mother’s world was to be in a beehive of activity. It was no place for the lazy,” he observes.

The rich context Reynolds provides—historical, social, and emotional—offers a fuller picture of his entire family’s journey, unfolding in a loving yet bittersweet contemplation of the culture and times they lived in. From hand-squeezing honeycomb to marking St. Lucia’s path to independence to his parents’ Adventism, Reynolds paints his history in tones of strength and kindness, as an example to learn from. He closes with a reproduction of his mother’s eulogy, filtering her lifelong passion for gardening against the legacy she left her children: “Mama planted many, many seeds during the course of her life,” he writes, “Most of all she planted seeds that produced discipline, industriousness, compassion, and self-belief in her children.”

Takeaway: Tender memoir of identity, society, and determination.

Comparable Titles: Jason Allen-Paisant’s The Possibility of Tenderness, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s A Man of Two Faces.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A