We start our visit to Barbados with the tale of Ace, the first rogue in the story, and then go on to visit multiple characters and places in this memoir cum travelogue. An extremely whimsical style of writing coupled with the author's obvious love for the island and its people makes for a rather charming, almost old-fashioned portrayal of this Caribbean island and its inhabitants.

I have to start out with some effusive praise of the writing. I've read several boring slice-of-life vignettes and travelogues, but this piece of writing was anything but. I can't quite place the style, but I was able to get a hint of Roald Dahl's writing in Boy and the first few chapters of Going Solo in the rhetorical flourishes applied to the characters; and a bit of Ruskin Bond's flow in the poems and rhythms applied left, right and centre. Which is not to imply a lack of originality. Each character jumps off the page, their images as vivid as the pictures painted by Woolly Hewitt or Darla Trotman. Even though the author does not explicitly describe their physical appearances, one can get a good sense of each one nonetheless. Even the descriptions of places seem to have their own metre, the writing swaying in your head as it gently colours in an increasingly clear outline. The author complements these descriptions with some poetry here and there. I amused myself for a bit by reading the poems out loud, as I believe many others reading this book might do as well.

At the end, though, one puts this book down with a smile on one's face and a gasp upon the realisation that what one thought was five minutes was actually closer to an hour and a half. Reading this book is no effort: it is best described as a joy. It is uplifting, fun to read, and extremely engrossing. A must read for sure!