Caribbean Chemistry: Tales from St Kitts, by Christopher Vanier, an engaging memoir by a retired engineer born in St Kitts in 1942. Educated in Antigua, Vanier won a scholarship to Cambridge University, later studied at the British Institute of Paris, and now lives between France and Britain. His coming-of-age story combines tales of boyhood scrapes with musings on identity and independence, and captures details of Vanier’s home island five decades ago with the verve suggested by his opening sentence: “Ah, to be an embryo again!”
Kingston University Press, ISBN 978-1-899999-45-3, 376 pp.
