A MORNING IN TRINIDAD

A case study of the mental and emotional processes of a business office personnel -- scarcely to be dignified by the term novel, this is a book that will appeal to a very limited audience. Except for its values on the score of presenting the intricate layers of social and racial consciousness at different caste levels, the upper, middle and lower class Negro, the Creole, the Indian, the half breed, the legitimate and the legitimate- and the white -- the book seems to me to have small justification. Competent enough, but unresolved, it reads as though intended for a setting for a story that never materializes. One is sharply aware- but wholly indifferent to- the cleavages resulting from the thwarted sex impulses, the inversions, the economic ambitions, the social yearnings, the fears- for the job- for the dignity- and so on. And one sees how time rings small changes, for the same sort of thing went on in the same office, at an earlier period. And so what?