Islands Of Eden: St. Vincent & The Grenadines, by Ferenc Mátè

The author and photographer of this book, an Italian, has performed an immensely worthwhile task in this book, and that is presenting through photographs and occasional supporting task a gorgeous view of a relatively obscure island nation in the Caribbean that deserves to be a lot better known. My own slight familiarity with St. Vincent and the Grenadines comes, aside from a casual knowledge of world geography, from the fact that it is one of the island nations whose citizens occasionally read my blog and show up in my nation stats, and because late in life, the reputed father of Alexander Hamilton [1] attempted to make a living as a farmer in Bequia, one of the islands of this beautiful chain in the Leeward Islands somewhat north of Trinidad & Tobago. Despite the fact that traveling to the islands is not easy because of the rugged terrain and the lack of transportation infrastructure to support large-scale tourism, the beauty of the land and the friendliness of its people conveyed by the author/photographer makes it worth the effort.

The contents of this book are straightforward. There are many photos, of luscious landscapes, of bright and multi-colored buildings, of the mostly African-Carib mixed citizens of the country and the occasional tourist, the fishing boats and the Norwegian-flagged small pleasure yachts, sometimes with some writing on the opposite page. This is a book mostly to look at and to call one’s travel agent after breathing a bit deeply thinking about how much time and money it will take to travel to and within the country, but the reading material adds value, whether it is talking about the friendliness of particular people, the way the photographer’s camera and laptop were not stolen despite the author’s absent-mindedness. Additionally, the author talks about local habits such as liming, where on Friday nights to Saturday afternoons people rest and talk and dance with others with drink in hand, and where in previous generations courtship used to take place. Some people spend their Sabbaths courting more successfully than I have, I suppose. Shrewdly, at the end, the author includes photographs and comments about half a dozen or so hotels in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, all of which look gorgeous, even if some of them appear a bit remote.

There are a lot of virtues that this book possesses. For one, both the photos and the text display the author to be a cultured and friendly person with a skill in showing people and places in a naturalistic way. This is the sort of book that one expects to read in the first class section of an airplane, or to have on one’s coffee table as both a trophy of and encouragement to future visits. The author is honest about the fact that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a low-middle income nation, but that appears to be due to the fact that transportation and trade routes appear to have passed the island by, rather than from any sort of lack of noteworthiness about the people themselves or their beautiful country. A laid back people with friendly ways and respect for the property of others is certainly the sort of people who deserve to live happily and well, and one wonders if the cost it would take to bring heavy infrastructure to the volcanic mountains of this island chain would destroy a great deal of the beauty and charm of the islands itself. Consider this island nation a hipster’s dream vacation—rugged and obscure and not likely to go mainstream anytime soon, but worth the time and effort and cost it takes to enjoy visiting the place and its people. The book, though, does an admirable job of conveying the island’s charm and beauty and for that the author and photographer deserves considerable praise from readers, hardy tourists, and the island nation’s chamber of commerce or ministry of tourism as well.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/book-review-alexander-hamilton/