In this extraordinary collection of stories, Jamaica Kincaid plunges us into an intensely physical world, partly remembered, partly divined: a childhood in the Caribbean - family, manner and landscape - transformed by her haunting, visionary style. It is a world of lush growing things, the lilting rhythms of work and play, the dangers of supernatural women and "jablesses", and the ghosts of people long gone. Kincaid vividly captures the experiences of growing up in this exotic, paradoxical paradise, where sensuality, fierce emotion and poverty coexist uneasily with teatime, churchgoing, and British grade-school texts about frostbitten chimney sweeps.
