Garth St. Omer has adapted the usual elements of existential art to re-create fictionally his native Caribbean island (Saint Lucia). For example, in chapter 8 of A Room on the Hill (1968) the description of Castries, Saint Lucia, at midnight (although he never names the city) might just as well be of the Left Bank of Paris: "He walked uptown along the empty streets. Driven by the wind, a piece of paper passed him noisily. A cat crossed the street and disappeared into the darkness of the other side. The business houses stood shut, cold and remote. But it was Sunday and the town, at this hour, was a dead town." The windblown newspaper and the midnight cat are familiar icons of existential loneliness and alienation. When the reader continues, though, he discovers that St. Omer subsequently counterpoints these trite images with distinctly West Indian ones. The protagonist, John Lestrade...