Myrtle Henry Sodhi
Dundurn Press
9 June 2026
328
eBook - PDF
Fiction
ARC via NetGalley
We've Been Here Before begins with the childhood stories of Lise-Rose, who struggles with speech and coming of age in a community anchored on both West African spirituality and the Catholic church. Lise-Rose must choose either to follow the ancestral ways of her father who is spiritually bound to the sea or her mother who has rooted herself in Catholicism. In the end her options are limited through events that connect her to the shape shifters of the village.
From Ma Lise-Rose's ancestors to her descendants, we see the struggle to honour ancestral knowledge while living on foreign lands. Francesca, Lise-Rose's granddaughter, leaves her family behind in Dominica as she embarks on a new life in Canada that seems limitless and oppressive all at once.
The stirring intergenerational saga is woven together with folklore and memory, and is based loosely on stories from the author's own family storytelling traditions.
We've Been Here Before is a book I struggled with initially. I found it hard to get into the flow of the prose in earlier chapters. It helped if I read aloud, but as I read most of this one in my lunch breaks at work, that wasn't always possible. Things did improve for me on that score as the book progressed though. It was interesting to see the generational changes within the family, and yet also the interconnection through folk traditions and shared memory. I had no prior knowledge of any traditional customs in Dominica when I started this book, so it was also fascinating for me from a multicultural perspective to get a bit of insight into that culture. I appreciated the storytelling style and the emotion portrayed in this tale, but unfortunately, it never managed to touch me deeply, so I was always reading as if standing a bit apart. I do acknowledge, though, that I read this book as part of a world reading challenge and it is not a genre/type of book I would normally have gravitated towards, so that could play a part in my feelings towards it. If you like women's fiction that is part historical, part family saga and part reflection on traditions, this is likely a book you will enjoy. I am giving it 3.5 as my personal rating, but that's a reflection probably more on my personal preferences than a lack of quality to the book itself.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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