Captures the language of Trinidad. I read this mainly because I'm trying to read more Naipaul and this is his breakthrough work. Did I really enjoy this? Not really but it was a fast read. Not sure where to venture next in the lit of Naipaul. ( )

Never has the description on the back of a book left me so ill prepared for what I actually took away from a novel. With words like tender, funny, and compassion I was expecting a nice light hearted read about life in a small town Trinidad during the 1930ies. At times it was all that. But, what I was not prepared for was the rampant, repeated descriptions of wife beating. What makes this really frightening is that the novel is told from the point of view of a young child. This, perfectly acceptable, actually encouraged, wife beating is just part of every day life for the boy. And wait, it gets worse. He has no father, and a mother who routinely beats him. One of the most profound examples of "the circle of violence system" I have ever come across in a novel. ( )

I have difficulty coming to terms with my enjoyment of Naipaul's fiction and his odious character. He is a self-professed physical abuser, a misogynist, a colonial apologist, and if not a full-blown racist, very close to a racist.

I first read Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas after seeing it on Barack Obama's list of summer reads. It was an excellent book about a man modeled on Naipaul's own father. In Miguel Street, Naipaul describes with fictitious invention the characters on the street where he grew up.

Naipaul ran with a mostly innocent gang of older boys. I believe most of them are of Indian descent but a few may be of Black Caribbean descent. He is a gifted student, but the people on his street are not. There is a push-cart worker, an amateur mechanic, a pimp, a carpenter, a poet, and several housewives who suffer under the fists of their husbands, though in Naipaul's telling the beatings are a rite of passage for women.

The character sketches are light-hearted, despite describing a world of poverty. The characters are constantly dirty and fighting. Each chapter focuses on one of them, going through a quick story about one part of their life, such as how working with the American military changed one of them, how the purchase of a car made a man obsessive, and how another man tried to move away from the street.

Despite his awful personal beliefs, Naipaul is a talented writer with a keen eye for male characters. ( )

The street in Port of Spain, Trinidad, is viewed by a fatherless boy who looks up to all the eccentric men on the street where he lives, although some are not much more than boys themselves. The book is generally viewed as witty but I found many of the stories to be quite sad. Somehow, by learning more of his background, this has put other books I've read by Naipaul, as well as his parsimonious ways, in better perspective. ( )

This novel is almost connected short stories--there is one narrator, a boy/teen who grows up as the book goes on. Each chapter is his description of someone who lives on Miguel Street. A few characters—his own mother and Hat and his two nephews Eddoes and Boyee— appear in many of the chapters.

I liked this book and enjoyed the different characters--most of whom are men--but I also wondered what Naipaul was trying to say about this neighborhood. It is WWII, Miguel Street is in or on the edge of the slum. And he does not portray these characters kindly. There are men who think they are very smart but clearly are not, men who don't work or skip work when they feel like it, violent men and women, a women with 8 kids by 7 men (who is not named as a prostitute, but maybe is?). There are also kind people, especially Hat, who took in his nephews. People move in and out, share fresh mangoes, generally look out for each other. In the end, the narrator does leave Miguel Street when he gets a chance to go to school in England. ( )