Trinidad and Tobago / All works
Novel
The Humming-Bird Tree
Ian McDonald · 1969
Synopsis
Trinidad, in the forties. Alan, a young white boy from a well-off family, befriends the young Indian boy who works as a yard boy for his parents, then falls for his friend's sister, who is also in the household's service. His parents would rather see him play with the other white boys on the estate; to see his friends, Alan has to lie, feign indifference, agree not to invite them to his party. Little by little, the pretence becomes real, and the child finds himself betraying the friendship that mattered most to him.
Context
The only novel by a writer known chiefly for his poems, it appeared from Heinemann and received the Winifred Holtby Prize of the Royal Society of Literature, which honoured the best regional novel. The book has become a classic of Caribbean literature and regularly returns to school curricula in the region; Heinemann reissued it in 1992, the year the BBC made a film of it shot in Trinidad, then Macmillan in 2004. Critics read in it a penetrating examination of the boundaries of race and class in a society on the threshold of great changes.
Who it is for
For anyone who wants to read, at a child's eye level, how colour and social rank undo a friendship in colonial Trinidad.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize for best regional novel, it is regarded as a Caribbean classic and is still studied in schools in the West Indies.
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