THE DEW BREAKER by Edwidge Danticat

The chapters in this book are basically short stories.  One reviewer said that this novel should be read all in one sitting.  I agree with that observation, but I did not do that.  Consequently, it seemed disjointed to me, and I had difficulty putting all the pieces together.  The first and last chapters tell the story of a father who tortured political prisoners in Haiti, prior to becoming a barber in Brooklyn.  His daughter, a sculptor, is unaware of the terrible things her father did, and is delivering a statue of him to a buyer in Florida.  The chapters in between are mostly about people who are tangentially connected to this man, including Haitian men who rent rooms in the basement of the barber’s house.  In some chapters, particularly one about three women studying to become U.S. citizens, I was unable to discern if or how the characters were connected to the barber.  Besides being seemingly unrelated, the chapters moved at a snail’s pace and failed to hold my attention for very long.  Slogging through this novel a few pages at a time made it even more fragmented.  Another problem with this book is that I could not really grasp what caused the barber to change so radically from someone who seemed to delight in human suffering.  Does he become miraculously remorseful?  It’s not really clear, as he doesn’t seem to have a sudden epiphany, other than having found himself the target of a superior’s wrath.  Perhaps for once he feels what it is like to be the prey rather than the hunter.