Your comment about humour also gives me a chance to include something I left out of the review because I just didn’t have room. Early on in Moses Migrating, Moses has his first run-in with one of his cabinmates — he’s from Dominica, which becomes his name for the rest of the book. They have a verbal confrontation and Moses observes:

He laugh. It was a kind of Caribbean laughter, derisive and mocking, what put you in your place. I was affronted. I stiffened.

And then half a page later:

He laugh again. One thing with a Caribee: whenhe can’t talk, he laugh.

The “Dominica laugh” returns a number of times later in the book, now that Selvon has given us the shorthand. In the same way, when the author finds his circumstances getting just too much, he gives us a written version of the “Dominica laugh” like the passage at the end of the review. It is a very nice touch.

I’m really pleased to see the whole trilogy reviewed Kevin, I hope to reach Moses Ascending myself soon and I’m definitely going to track down Moses Migrating. It’s cheering to know that it’s not just the first, more famous, work that’s worth engaging with.

Great stuff, a pleasure to read and one that really encourages me to return to this much underrated writer.

Given our previous discussions elsewhere, Isabel I wll be very interested in your opinion when you do get to Selvon. As for your wondering about what would have happened had he gone north to Canada or the U.S., my guess is that in the 1950s his experience would have been different because those areas were so much different — today, it would be much the same (parts of all three books reminded me very much of both Toronto and Calgary today).

I like the idea of the immigrant story, going back and forth.

I wonder whether Moses would have had a different fate if he had gone to Canada or the northern parts of the US.

Great review