conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled Windward Heights about Cond's, Bront, Set with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, Maryse Cond's Windward Heights is a retelling of the Emily Bront classic <a href="/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?index=books&amp;field-keywords=Bront%20and%20Wuthering">Wuthering Heights</a>. The title of the novel alone might tell you that something formulaic is afoot--and the book does for the most part mirror the wretched and doomed story of Heathcliff and Cathy. But Cond's plan is actually ingenious. She goes beyond Bront, using shades of human color as a metaphor to illustrate subtle variations on evil, misery, and racism.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first two paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Windward Heights
  Des Antilles, nous sommes la phalange Du grand Parti de tous les travailleurs Qui vont bientot retirer de la fange
  Consequently, after only one year of teaching, ninety-five per cent of Cathy's pupils received scholarships and six fishermen's children were admitted to the lycée Camot in La Pointe.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I haven't done anything wrong. I have nothing to reproach myself for. I took him to Dominica because he was my friend and he asked me to. When the winds blow in the right direction, from Saint-Louis to Roseau, it's a breeze. Half a day at the most. So I didn't even think of refusing.
  When I climb into my Marie, Mére de Dieu, my boat daubed in blue and white, the colors of the Virgin Mary, and I lean on my oars, I become another person. I'm no longer a nonentity mocked by the children and nicknamed Roro Rum because of what happened to my papa. I forget the rat-hole where I live just two steps from the seashore. I forget the rags I have for clothes. I forget I haven't got a wife or a child, I forget I've lost my maman and my papa. That I've got nothing to warm my heart or my body. Except for my boat, a few bamboo lobster pots, a few nets I patch up as best I can. And the sea.
  I prefer the bad weather days when it squalls, when the waves rise up to soak the dome of the sky, when a black bar shuts out the horizon and you can see neither Terre-de-Bas nor Terre-de-Haut, the islands of Les Saintes, and even less Dominica, usually lying close by on the other side of the channel. But I also like those days when, lapping over the sandbanks, the water takes on the color of hope and the sand sparkles white under the sun like the teeth of a handsome black woman.
  Maman has gone where we'll all go one day or another, a few hours after I was born. Yet I didn't grieve as a small boy because I had my papa.
  My father was a master seiner. His family, who supplied the fish for the Murats' table, had never really known slav­ery, so to speak. They were a proud and upstanding race.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Was it out of miserliness that First-Born didn't touch a thing at l'Engoulvent, so sorely in need of attention after all the years it had remained uninhabited, soaking up the sun and the rain? The walls remained cracked, the roof infested with bats and rats, and the beams gnawed away by termites. As for the iguanas, they continued to sleep in the yard in their scaly sheaths. First-Born chose for himself Justin Gagneur's old bedroom that looked out over the savanna, at the trees flattened by the fury of the wind and beyond the cliffs, the ocean that dashed to the four corners of the horizon, tucking up its muslin petticoat. The workers who toiled to make tomatoes, lettuce and carrots sprout from the stony soil quickly saw that every minute of First-Born's life was devoted to his daughter. He bathed her, powdered her, doted on and coddled her, and himself cooked her sweet potato and arrowroot pap. He placed her cradle in his bedroom and while she slept serene and radiant on her pillow, he would place his ear to her chest every five minutes to see whether she was still breathing. Shortly before dusk he would take her in his arms and walk with her to the edge of the cliff. The child looked straight out to sea, and without batting an eyelid, watched the soaring birds. Sometimes she uttered cries inviting them to play with her. Then she closed her eyes and, nostrils flaring like a grown up's, she breathed in the scent of the breeze as it blew back to earth. When darkness started to fall, First-Born slowly walked back to the house where Graziella was waiting for them, singing in front of a great bath of leaves and water warmed by the sun.
  No visitor crossed the threshold of l'Engoulvent. Except for Irmine. Every Saturday morning, the day had scarcely time to slip on its light when she climbed down from her tilbury. The first few times she did not come alone. She had Fréda or Cassandre, when she was home from school, accompany her. The sulky looks of disdain the two girls cast around them indicated that they had not come of their own free will. Soon, under one pretext or another, their visits were few and far between and then stopped altogether. After having handed Graziella the baskets lovingly filled with all sorts of victuals by Hosannah, Irmine swooped down on Anthuria in order to examine her every aspect. She sharply criticized the way First-Born and Graziella were looking after her. Were they powdering her with moussache flour from cassava to give her a lovely skin? Were they smoothing her hair with palma-christi oil? When she finished her inspection, she headed for the graveyard. She spent hours and hours there, without drinking or eating, as if her body no longer counted, praying, crying, daydreaming, planting lilies or trumpet flowers in pots, changing the water in the flower vases, scraping the wax with the point of a knife, fixing the candles in their holders and rethreading the pearls on the crosses and wreaths. All this time she spoke out loud and rambled on monotonously to an invisible listener about the routine of her days.
  First-Born never accompanied his mother to the graveyard. Once, when she wanted to take the child there, he had gone into a fit of rage. It was as if something there frightened him. The letters intertwined in stone—cathy de linsseuil—razyé—had given him the proof he had been looking for. So the bad-mouthers hadn't just bad-mouthed. And the bad-talkers hadn't just bad-talked. He had guessed rightly. This reunion in death proved it: Cathy de Linsseuil and Razyé had loved each other. First-Born had once been furious at what the power of money and the vanity of women could do, and time and again approved his father's vengeance. Oh yes, he had been right to put Guadeloupe to fire and the sword. Then one night, while he was listening to Anthuria sleep, with the window open on a sullen crescent moon, a thought had slipped into his heart. Razyé—Cathy de Linsseuil. Cathy de Linsseuil—Razyé. Who would ever know the truth behind this sombre love story? Who would know the fruit it had borne?
  Ever since that day, questions and suspicions had begun to torment him. Thank God his Cathy was no longer on this earth to share his doubts and dread. She could lie in ignorance.
  Because of this apprehension that was gnawing at his heart, First-Born no longer took care of himself and his smell trailed behind him like the smoke from a sugarcane train. His forehead was half-hidden by a fringe of greasy hair. His beard grew picky-haired around his mouth. He dressed sloppily in drab, worn-out clothes. Those who had known Razyé when he was Razyé shook their heads, sighing. What a come-down! He who said "Like father, like son" didn't know what he was saying. Boys are sent to shame the memory of their fathers. First-Born ignored the children, cautiously entrenched behind the fence, who yelled out on seeing him: "Mi guiab'là dero, kayiman!"