Bahamas: If I Had the Wings, by Helen Klonaris

I couldn't find either of the books that Ann Morgan suggested for the Bahamas - both appeared to be out of print. So I was relieved to hear of a new book coming out, Helen Klonaris's debut collection of short stories.

Helen is a Greek-Bahamian writer (apparently there is a small Greek community there) who lives between the Bay Area, California and Nassau, Bahamas. The stories are mostly coming-of-age stories with LGBT protagonists. It's not a genre that I would normally read. Fortunately I found there was more to them than that. There is a sinister edge to most of these stories, supernatural even although not in a traditional ghost story manner. There is also a strong ecological theme, highlighting the tension between developers building condos for the wealthy, and the local people who are sensitive to the habitats of fish and wildlife and to the traditional uses of plants.

For the most part, I enjoyed the stories and was struck by the author's descriptive powers and vivid imagination. I found the sustained use of "you" in several of the stories irritating after a while. These were stories narrated by "I" and addressed to "you" - not the reader, but the one who is the object of the narrator's love. I'm not sure why it irritated me - could it be because it made the stories feel voyeuristic. Just when I started to get a little tired of stories of love against obstacles - the vigorous homophobia of small religious communities - the final story, "The Dreamers" drew me in and blew me away. It's definitely the most powerful in the collection and left me with a lot to ponder on.

If I Had the Wings is published by Peepal Tree Press, a British publisher of Caribbean and Black British fiction.