This morning, I finished a random little book called The Mockery Bird, which is a novella about a random paradise island in the Indian Ocean, written in the early eighties. The basic plot concerns the island’s moves towards independence from British rule, and the various colonial diplomats at work there, but it’s better than it sounds.

I don’t think it’s quite sure whether it wants to be a satire, a sketch, a piece of literature, or just a comic novel. There’s traces of racism in it (the word “wog” makes regular occurrences), but I don’t know if it’s with tongue in cheek or not.

It’s funny, definitely, but more in a one-liner and farce kind of way than with any Wilde-esque wit. Because many of the characters are caricatures, they tend to be overblown and a little hard to take. A couple of them have their saving graces, and the author’s descriptions of Kingy’s mannerisms and general air are quite fantastic.

In fact, when the author waxes lyrical for a couple of sentences, you get the feeling that he really does have talent. His little run-on paragraphs describing a room or a scene are rich with texture, wordplay and images, yet in other places it’s almost as if it were written by a journalist, using the bare minimum of descriptive language.

As I said, it’s an odd little book, with smirkable aspects in places, some social commentary about Britain giving up its old colonial lands, along with some eco-warrior narrative thrown in for good measure. I don’t know whether I’d really recommend it to anyone, but I quite enjoyed it. ( )