"Mr. Potter" by Jamaica Kincaid

"Mr. Potter" is less a novel than a meditation with the bare outline of a plot. It is chanted rather than narrated, Ms. Kincaid repeating certain phrases over and over. It is in this unique cadence we hear the internal monologue of the woman who was never to know her father, the eponymous Mr. Potter, until adulthood, after her move from Antigua to the "temperate zone" in the States.

This story is full of regret and heartache at the apparently pandemic inability of Caribbean descendants of slaves to love or value anything. This appears to sweep the entire culture; I believe it says more about Ms. Kincaid than about the rest of the Caribbean population. Surprisingly effective, however, are the author's evocations of the fierce Caribbean sun and the blinding whites and sun-splashed pastels that rule there.

Not sure I can recommend this work.