Pynter Bender Jacob Ross Fourth Estate, 452pp, £16.99

Could it be magic?

Set on a fictional Caribbean island, Pynter Bender follows its eponymous hero from childhood, starting with a dreamlike account of the tightly knit Bender women. The second half of the novel then branches out to consider education, oppression and uprising in the Caribbean. It is written beautifully, and reads like prose poetry.

Pynter is born blind, although he subsequently gains his sight, and Ross uses words to paint not just what Pynter sees, but the smells and physical sensations that had previously defined his experience. The language moves effortlessly between dialect and elevated diction, adding to the surreal aspect: the medicine woman who “fed him light the way she fed him fruits” can cure “every livin sickness in a yooman been”.

Yet it is difficult to locate the plot amid these vivid but loosely connected incidents: even Pynter’s blindness quickly comes to seem like one small detail among many: accounts of family history, arrests, superstition, accidents, dreams, learning, magic, landscapes, long-lost relatives, riots. This lack of focus is compounded by a drastic stylistic shift from ornate magical realism to a more political narrative. Ultimately, the novel’s strongest feature – its figurative language – undermines its ambitious range.

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