‘Liv Little pulls you into a world where the characters feel like everyone you’ve ever known, loved and learned. Bitter Melon is deftly written, full of heart and human nature’s complexities.’ Candice Carty-Williams
The hotly anticipated second novel from Liv Little, founder of gal-dem and author of Rosewater
Jalissa and her dad aren’t close, but when he invites her to Jamaica, his homeland, for the first time, she says yes.
She’s running from heartbreak and a loss of her own; he’s running out of time.
As they travel through sun-drenched towns and navigate tangled family roots, old wounds open and long-held silences begin to break. They’re both trying to outrun something-but along the way, they cross paths with people whose stories shift their own, helping them face the past, reckon with the present and reimagine what comes next.
Bitter Melon is a tender, funny, heart-bruised road trip into memory, mortality and the fierce, fragile love between a daughter and the father she’s still learning to understand.
‘A beautiful, tender story about the relationship between a father and daughter, the meaning of home, and finding your way back to yourself. Little captures Jamaica, forever home to me, so beautifully. Thank you for taking me there.’ Shani Akilah
‘So moving and unguarded and beautiful. I didn’t want to miss a word.’ Lucy Boynton
The hotly anticipated second novel from Liv Little, founder of gal-dem and author of Rosewater
Jalissa and her dad aren’t close, but when he invites her to Jamaica, his homeland, for the first time, she says yes.
She’s running from heartbreak and a loss of her own; he’s running out of time.
As they travel through sun-drenched towns and navigate tangled family roots, old wounds open and long-held silences begin to break. They’re both trying to outrun something-but along the way, they cross paths with people whose stories shift their own, helping them face the past, reckon with the present and reimagine what comes next.
Bitter Melon is a tender, funny, heart-bruised road trip into memory, mortality and the fierce, fragile love between a daughter and the father she’s still learning to understand.
‘A beautiful, tender story about the relationship between a father and daughter, the meaning of home, and finding your way back to yourself. Little captures Jamaica, forever home to me, so beautifully. Thank you for taking me there.’ Shani Akilah
‘So moving and unguarded and beautiful. I didn’t want to miss a word.’ Lucy Boynton
Reviews
A beautiful, tender story about the relationship between a father and daughter, the meaning of home, and finding your way back to yourself. Little captures Jamaica, forever home to me, so beautifully. Thank you for taking me there.
Liv Little pulls you into a world where the characters feel like everyone you've ever known, loved and learned. Bitter Melon is deftly written, full of heart and human nature's complexities.
So moving and unguarded and beautiful. I didn't want to miss a word
Liv Little captures human experience with such a delicacy and beauty that it will break and heal your heart all at the same time. In Bitter Melon she captures grief and love with the same tender, unflinching hand. Funny, heartbreaking and unrelentingly alive, this book about what it means to get to know someone right before you lose them will change your life.
Bitter Melon is an elegant, surprising and profoundly moving novel which wraps together themes of love, grief and rebirth against the lush, fiery setting of modern Jamaica. Jalissa and Delroy's roadtrip is as much about finding their way back to each other as it is about finding themselves. The realism of their love - the things that are said and left unsaid between a father and daughter who desperately want to know each other - is deeply affecting. A book that will break you apart, and make you whole again.