Passing Through

Passing Through by Colin Channer One World/Ballantine Books, June 2004 $13.95, ISBN 0-345-45334-4

Channer combines the emotionally titillating eroticism of his first book, Waiting in Vain, with the psychic depth of his second, Satisfy My Soul. In a cycle of seven interrelated short stories, he outlines the interconnected lives of characters who pass through the fictitious Caribbean island of San Carlos. Native or visitor, young or old, privileged or poor, each is on a quest for fulfillment, many of them "ghosts in search of love."

The journeys begin with an American, Eddie Blackwell, half-black and half-Irish, an orphan-turned-priest. Father Eddie's cathartic liaison with two women, Eugenia Campbell and Roselyn Thompson, spawns a Marquez-like web of relations that becomes the familial framework for the novel. It is Eddie and Eugenia's son, St. William Rawle, and Eddie and Roselyn's granddaughter, Estrella Thompson, who become the glue that holds the story together.

Passing Tlwough takes the reader from the early 190Os to the present day. In using a fictitious island as the setting for his story, Channer captures the nuances of various Caribbean islands-their history, language, customs, ethnicities, landscape, culture, politics. In the stories, we witness the development of the island, but we also witness development in the characters, most notably the long-suffering Estrella.

The stories are bound together by letters to the editor, written primarily by St. William Rawle. These letters provide links between the stories, and provide the reader with an overall sense of the larger tale: the politics of power and race that undergird life in this island community.

Channer's natural flair for symbolism and irony runs unforced throughout Passing Through, but it is most evident in the work's three key stories-"The High Priest of Love," and "The Girl With the Golden Shoes." With Passing Through, Channer continues to show his skills with evocative narrative, stimulating imagery, on-point descriptive details and fluid dialogue.

-Reviewed by Denolyn Carroll