Storm

'It was dark outside with the storm gathering itself up for another strike, and I felt like there was a darkness inside me, too.' These words, spoken by Buck Smith, the young white narrator of this complex and absorbing novel, capture the ferocity of the elemental and human worlds between which the action moves. We are on the isolated east coast of Virginia, where for generations Buck's ancestors have worked their farm with the help of generations of other Smiths, the descendants of African slaves. Differences of race and colour have never - apparently - been of much significance. But, as Buck painfully comes to realise, this superficial amity covers a multitude of bigotries, even amongst those adults whose notions of right and wrong, truth-telling and lying, he has never before had to question. This is a brilliant contemporary variation on a Romeo and Juliet theme, executed in a style in which anger and compassion are unforgettably combined.