The Pain Tree - Softcover

"At every level of her stories' constructions, Senior works deftly ... dealing with open palms in the deep wells of remembrance, ancestry and a crosshatch of colonising scars, this fiction looks face-upwards to the mountains of multiple Jamaicas for hope, home and daily bread." - The Trinidad Guardian

"[Senior's] prose is supple and ornate ... there is technique aplenty." - Quill and Quire

"[Its] voices are authentic - a variety of rhythms and cadences appear on the page - and Olive Senior pulls readers into quiet moments of transformation with considerable emotional intensity. Like Alice Munro's stories, some are remarkably complex structurally ... like Mavis Gallant's short stories, these combine the engaged eye of a resident with the distanced eye of an observer ... I read The Pain Tree twice (yes, twice!)" - Buried in Print

"The magic of Olive Senior's stories is that they weather time with uncommon power. In these collected short fictions, published and broadcast in various incarnations from the 1990s forward, the concerns of class, language, identity, and refuge reign, explored in prose that is all the more commanding for its subtle navigations." - Caribbean Beat

"We read these stories fully expecting that we will meet our real selves along the way. We are not disappointed." - Rachel Manley

The Pain Tree tells stories that speak to all aspects of Jamaican life. We hear from poor folk making the best of past hardships ("Coal"); rich folk plotting future selfishness ("The Goodness of My Heart"); and a young girl, forced to shoulder her mother's burdens in addition to her own ("Lollipop"). Bookending these are two powerful stories about the inextricability of home and history: in "The Pain Tree," the protagonist realizes the love she abandoned, and the pain she left behind; in "Flying," the lead character, searching for his missing piece, comes home for good.