The brother of Trinidad's golden boy

The resulting increase in real estate costs, coupled with low oil prices that have led to an economic crisis, corruption and crime, are making life increasingly difficult for locals.

The inhabitants of the island, even poor ones like Paul and Peter's parents, therefore live barricaded in houses with bars on the windows, guarded by guard dogs.

Inside them, TVs screen US soap operas that convey new lifestyles and ambitions, while water from the taps comes and goes, and in the darkness of the forest murderers, thieves, traffickers and kidnappers mingle with the spirits of tradition: the douen, children dead before birth who have no face and walk with their feet turned backwards; the soucouyant, who sucks the victim dry, leaving them drained, alive perhaps, but not quite; mama Dlo, half-woman, half-snake.

They are 13 years old Paul and Peter when we meet them in the opening of Golden Child and Paul has just disappeared. Evening is falling and there is no trace of him. When darkness has now enveloped the house on the edge of the bush, the father goes to look for him at the river, where he hasn't been for years, as images of the robbery they suffered two weeks earlier come to his mind: having returned from his job as a security guard at the petrochemical plant, he found his wife Joy and two children tied up on the kitchen floor, the sofas disembowelled by those looking for money and jewellery.

He finds Paul neither at the river nor at the sports ground nor in the village. Night passes and there is still no news of him.

And as a series of analects follow one another to recount the previous lives of the two boys, and sow clues to what might have been the boy's fate, the reader finds himself considering the dilemmas and decisions his parents faced in raising their children.

Both from the Hindu community, Clyde and Joy come from different backgrounds: the former left school early and soon left home, after a fight with his father, learning to rely only on himself and hard work, keeping quiet, minding his own business. F

til he comes into contact with Joy's attending family he is determined to ask nothing of anyone, fearing what may be asked of him back.

Joy also did not study, but not because she came from a poor family or did not believe in studying, on the contrary. She did not study because she is a woman. Her uncle is a doctor and her brother a judge; their dynasty puts family first. Joy is convinced that siblings, because they are twins, should always be together, about this she feels no reason.

She thinks that Peter should help Paul, no matter if it prevents Peter from being moved to the older class. Joy always manages to get the two to stay in the same class, even when Peter is admitted to the Catholic school, the most renowned and the most demanding.

Clyde, on the other hand, is doubtful. He does not understand Paul, who without anyone noticing lies on the lawn looking at the stars in the company of his dogs, bewitched by the beauty of the night sky.

Several times he wondered whether he should not be locked up in a psychiatric institution.

His preference clearly goes to the scholar Peter, the one who, like him, believes in work and embodies dreams of social emancipation that he does not even think he has.

For this son Clyde puts money aside so that he can go to the United States. Why should Peter give up the bright future that awaits him to help his strange brother?

Why bet on the family, and more generally on a society where there is a place for everyone, if it hinders the pursuit of individual ambitions? These questions remain in the background for a long time, until Clyde - because Joy's opinion is not taken into account - is faced with what for a parent is perhaps the most difficult of decisions.

Claire Adam. Golden child. Translation by Emilia Benghi. 66and2nd, pp. 262, € 20