Caryl Phillips Critical Essay | Critical Review by Hugh Barnes

SOURCE: "Return of the Native," in London Review of Books, Vol. 7, No. 4, March 7, 1985, pp. 20-21.

In the following excerpt, Barnes discusses the myth of resettlement in The Final Passage, concluding that Phillips "only partially illuminates its theme."

Homesickness is fabulous magic. Even as the world shrinks and the epic edge is blunted, the resettlement myth persists. Ulyssean travelogues are few and far between in Caryl Phillips's The Final Passage and the novels of Paule Marshall, but families uproot themselves. Their stories correspond, but not in time or place. Phillips's travellers leave their small Caribbean island for Britain in the 1950s, when prospects were cheery. The white folks of the West had never had it so good: too good, or so their masters told them, to settle at menial labours. Since the publication of her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones, in 1959, Paule Marshall has been weaving...
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