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- No Telephone to Heaven (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Revised Third Edition)
- No Telephone to Heaven (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- First Published: 1987
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: The 1970’s
- Setting: Jamaica, the United States, and England
- Characters: Clare Savage, Boy Savage, Kitty Savage, Harry/Harriet, Christopher, Paul H., Bobby
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Social realism, Bildungsroman, Novel
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Social action, Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Class conflict, Racism, Revolutionaries, Blacks, Murder or homicide, Social issues, England or English people, Violence, Oppression, Jamaica or Jamaicans, Guerrillas or guerrilla warfare, 1970's
- Locales: Europe, United States, England, Jamaica, North America, Central America and West Indies, United Kingdom
Form and Content
Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven dramatizes a woman’s, a generation’s, and ultimately a whole culture’s struggle toward identity and self-determination in a world that seems too often to conspire against these fundamental human aspirations. The movement is “toward” rather than “to” because the author’s grim vision does not allow for a happy ending in which all turns out well. In overview, the novel’s structure may appear nearly chaotic, jumping as it does back and forth between past and present and from one country...
(The entire page is 2227 words.)
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