The reader of Fireflies, a novel as alive with a keen (and more compassionate) awareness of the pathos and absurdity of Trinidad Indian life as V. S. Naipaul's early works, may doubt the sincerity of Shiva Naipaul's disillusion with his subject matter. Yet it is an amorphous society he depicts, fundamentally materialistic, bogus on its spiritual side, as unpromising to the sensitive artist as the English society of Dickens' time; but it falls short of that society, in Mr Naipaul's presentation, in lacking centres of moral growth. No such centre is provided by the Hindu Khoja family which, weakly propped by tradition, is shown crumbling in an insecure atmosphere of selfishness and opportunism. The jungle laws of competition regulate everyone's actions. Everyone's, that is, except Mr Naipaul's triumphant creation, the simple and simple-minded Mrs Lutchman…. [She] endures in the midst of decay, salvaging what she can in the...