This is one of those odd books where I definitely enjoyed it and was pulled into it, but I'm not sure how to describe it. It actually reminds me of a dream one might have, because you're reading about things that aren't strictly logical, but you get pulled into the logic all the same. And I know it all meant something, but I can't sum it up in a neat message. I can see patterns, but they're not clear to me in an intellectual way.

Most basically it's the story of a family in the Virgin Islands (they become the US Virgin Islands during the novel). There are two sisters, both of whom have incestuous affairs (one knowingly, the other not). There's a mistress with a hoof leg, a daughter with a backwards foot, body hair with magical qualities, significant spider webs. So goes the family history. But there's also the history of the islands themselves and their relationship with the US and the tourists who take them over. I think that was one of the most powerful draws of the book, the way the author presents this place as so familiar and lived in and alive. And yet never completely understood--which is not a bad thing.