Book excerpt: When Gloria passes away, it falls to her British-born children to host the traditional Jamaican Nine Night celebration. Family and friends, familiar and unfamiliar, arrive to celebrate the life of the woman who connects them all and deal with unfinished business along the way. Nine Night is at once moving and raucously funny. Gordon paints the rituals of grief, the tensions of family and the complexities of identity with an acute eye and razor-sharp wit.