THE OVERSEER

Somewhere on an island off Madagascar, as was Masson's more successful first book Advocate of the Isle, this story as old as the Garden of Eden and often just like it traces an idyl of innocence and corruption under the bougainvillea. Its first person narrator, now fighting in the Caledonian Revolutionary Guerrillas, retraces his advent to the plantation La Morelle where as a boy he fell in love with Marie-Therese, a childhood affection who was to become a lifelong love. Presiding over them was Esperon, the overseer, the devil- an instant recognition, whose sullying malevolence will taint and eventually destroy them both..... Almost as old fashioned as a lavaliere, fragrant with vetiver and vanilla vines, gravid with dreams and regrets, the atmosphere turns close and assumes a taste for sentiment which is heavier than the story itself.