Oonya Kempadoo"s debut novel has a simple enough plot as four young girls grow up in Tamarind Grove, Kempadoo"s version of 1970"s Guyana. The girls seem to do all the usual growing up things but subtly underpinning the coming-of-age stories are a series of strange and increasingly powerful currents from the world beyond their young lives. Kempadoo is exuberantly uninhibited about the girls sexual education. From buying bras to persuading an uncle to have sex with a piano there is a carefree eroticism, but it is the political and social upheavals that ultimately have the bigger impact. The story is recounted by Lula, a girl from a mixed white, black and Indian family. For her and her friends the sound of distant gunshots is a cause for excitement, but for her family it is a far more serious portent of the ever more wide spread crime and corruption that surrounds them. Watching it all is the Buxton Spice mango tree--"swelling itself up with all the secrets"--as the combination of explosive racial politics and hormone fuelled puberty both come to shattering conclusions. --Nick Wroe