I’m delighted to recommend the new novel by Barbara Jenkins, De Rightest Place. This debut novel is funny (often laugh-out-loud), sad, intriguing and complex; it’s also immensely readable. One of its strengths is its wildly diverse cast of characters, reflecting urban T&T’s complicated cultural and ethnic mix (it’s set in Belmont). These fascinating, often weird and wonderful personages hover around the pub—de rightest place—and tell their stories; indeed the pub is itself a kind of character. There’s humour, tragedy, love and intrigue in this fascinating novel set in contemporary Port of Spain in all its bewildering complexity.
