Book Rec

A long time ago .... okay, okay, okay. When I got out of college my first go round I was a script reader for like half a second. For someone with a Film Studies degree being a script reader is a wonderful job. Too bad it hardly pays and there's no future in it. In the end things really didn't work out for me but I was lucky enough to read two amazing novels from my stint.

The first was Minty Alley by CLR James. A piercing, insightful coming of age tale set in early 20th Century West Indies. I was instantly engrossed by the Buddha-like hero, who ventures beyond his safe upbringing to experience a part of society he hardly knows. The characters of the story are all full and basically jump off the page. I believe in academic circles CLR James (a West Indian himself) is known as a prolific social and literary critic. I think Miny Alley is James' only fictional novel. It however surreptitiously includes great social commentary in how the upper middle class hero navigates his new working class environment. I hope this brief review/summary of Minty Alley doesn't paint it as a clinical and distant novel. It is in fact quite the opposite. Perhaps the best description I can give is this: Minty Alley is a realistic soap opera on steriods and studying for its PhD. It is truly an exceptional work of fiction and I could not recommend it more.