Whether with their hibiscus, hurricane, or their history, the Caribbean islands force themselves upon their writers. Not content to be mere settings, they demand an active role. Two novels from a small company specialising in Caribbean literature make this clear. The themes of Lakshmi Persaud’s Butterfly in the Wind and Brenda Flanagan’s You Alone are Dancing although quite different, share a vital sense of place. It is part physical, part historical. These books could not have been written about anywhere else.
In You Alone Are Dancing Brenda Flanagan is writing of a generation, of the first inheritors of independence. Her fictitious Santabella is beginning to stagger under the weight of foreign exploitation and corrupt home government. Rosehill, a ruined cocoa estate, has been squatted so long that until oil-drilling becomes an issue no-one questions the squatters’ rights. The gloves are off, the bulldozers in, and the rain is making everything worse. In the messy struggle for communal survival a young woman comes to the fore, discovering how far she can rely on her boyfriend.
