Vexing encounters

Abstract

"Phillips‟s novel is set in an unnamed small Caribbean island during a transitional period, sometime between the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of the slaves in 1834. It is divided into five parts of unequal length. It presents three main narratives framed by a “Prologue” and an “Epilogue”: Emily Cartwright‟s first-person narrative of her voyage to, and stay in, her father‟s Caribbean sugar plantation; Cambridge‟s first-person narrative, in the form of a spiritual testament which borrows from slave narratives such as that of Equiano, of the “extraordinary circumstances” (133) that lead him from Africa to England, where he becomes a Christian and a free man, and then to the West Indies as a slave; and a short, anonymous and extremely biased newspaper report detailing Cambridge‟s murder of the overseer Arnold Brown and his subsequent execution.