When I read “Death by Fire” years ago, I knew that Saint Lucia had produced another writer of the calibre, or of even deeper essence than Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul, only that Anderson clearly did not suffer from the hang-ups and traumas of poor Naipaul, notwithstanding that Reynolds had grown up in similar poverty as Naipaul’s, or perhaps worse, but luckily had not faced the sociological demons that had brutalized Naipaul’s unusually fertile mind, a bruised product of the relatively more traumatized human settlements terrain of otherwise beautiful Trinidad & Tobago.
As an Economist myself, my later gobbling-up of “The Struggle For Survival” left me even more enthused with Dr. Reynolds acute literary panache, and it has always remained stuck in the remotest recesses of my mind how I almost shed a tear when I first observed and pondered upon the cover of that profoundly touching piece of Lucian literature. Even now, just watching that cover page (in Minister Lennard “Spider” Montoute’s hand) and imagining the struggle for survival of our poor, wretched grandmothers, carrying those thousands of tons of charcoal upon their heads, for pennies per week, into the belly of that ship, threatens to rupture my tear glands. But soldiers aren’t supposed to cry! We are supposed to bravely embrace the struggle for survival and produce even more Nobel Laureates.
Then Jako Productions allowed me to experience what must doubtlessly represent the pinnacle of any pleasurable pant I may have had to date, in my entire life, in this terrestrial existence: the introduction of Dr. Reynolds to the audience on the evening of the launching of his latest literary delight, “The Stall Keeper”, somewhere in that historic, magical city of Vieux Fort.
Let me take this opportunity to salute Dr. Reynolds as he tours the continents, while earnestly hoping that his notorious bashfulness does not in any way inhibit his reactions with the thousands of our relatively bold and beautiful Lucians in the Diaspora.
“The writing is exciting. When you pick up The Stall Keeper, you just can’t put it down. I read Death by Fire and The Struggle for Survival some years ago with fever in my heart and soul; I went through The Stall Keeper last month like a bubbling juvenile, eager for more and more vibes on the Vieux Fort existence. The character, Eugene, caught my imagination like a rat in a trap, and his father, “Big Man”, simply blew me away! Dr. Reynolds’ vivid descriptions of Big Man’s sad life – as he seeks desperately to deal with the pain and shame of his only son’s homosexual traits and related mannerisms – is a work of art”.
Born and raised in St. Lucia, Peter Lansiquot is an economist and diplomat working with CARICOM in Guyana