Waiting in Vain

Denolyn Carroll

Colin Channer's Waiting in Vain did more than strike a chord with female readers. Channer turned the contemporary fiction genre on its ear by detailing a rich, complex, lushly written love story between the passionate Fire and the equally intense and intelligent Sylvia. Essence

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Representing a figure all too rare in contemporary romance, African American A.J. "Fire" Heath, a sensitive, sophisticated man with a good career, is a major asset to this appealing first novel by short-story writer Channer. Fire's combination of good looks, kindness and brains, and his desire to find the right woman "in the fullness of time," will make him nearly irresistible to readers of commercial fiction. A painter and novelist who has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Fire shuttles between his native Jamaica, London and New York. In a chance encounter on a Brooklyn street, Fire meets Sylvia, another transplanted Jamaican, who is disappointed with her magazine-editing job and her art-dealer lover. Fire and Sylvia pursue and retreat from each other in convincingly soul-searching scenarios while Channer vividly describes urban New York, industrial Brixton and rural Jamaica. Channer has a fine ear for Jamaican patois (and for when it bubbles up in otherwise American-accented conversations). Also to his credit, Channer largely resists the trendy name-dropping and product placements so common in this genre. Subplots of intrigue in the African American art world add substance without detracting from the pace. As readers in the know will recognize, this tale of continent-hopping romance takes its title from a Bob Marley song. Author tour. (July)

Library Journal

Jamaican author and poet Adrian Heath, a.k.a. Fire, has a "love at first sight" experience when he sees a woman with daisy buttons having trouble with her packages in New York. They flirt, thinking they will never meet again, but later end up at the house of a mutual friend, an artist named Ian. Sylvia is involved with another man, which breaks Fire's heart and sends him back to London. But neither of them can let their attraction end, and later they have a dangerous affair. Ian's love-hate relationships with Fire, his mother, and women in general become the catalyst for the rest of the story. First novelist Channer reveals his characters' idiosyncrasies in poetic description. The dialog, full of Jamaican slang, takes a little getting used to, but the culture and backdrop are so finely scripted that readers will feel they are in Jamaica. Sensuous and sometimes outrageous love scenes interspersed with the stirring emotions of the characters keep the pages turning to the very end. Fans of romance and psychological drama will enjoy this passionate and honest story; highly recommended.--Shirley Gibson Coleman, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI