Hooked on a Reef – Book Review
February 11, 2007
Diane Bostwick’s book, Hooked on a Reef, is the story of a Palm Springs playboy Steve Warren, and a young Jamaican anti-hero named Denzel.
Steve comes to Jamaica to make it big in the supposed boom times in post-independence Jamaica by taking over a beach front Montego Bay restaurant. Things don’t work out exactly as planned, enter conflict, as Denzel wheedles his way into the world of the Reef Club.
The book does a nice job with the history of Jamaica on those years (late 60′s to mid 70′s), going into a lot of details of how Jamaica changed with the Michael Manley administration’s move towards socialism. There are not many resources with this kind of information in the US, and I found it very interesting.
Normally I’d like a guy like Steve, he’s got cash, he dates hotty, high maintenance women, and he comes to Jamaica for fun and profit, but there’s a class-ist thread that runs through the characters and the entire story that just put me off.
Maybe it’s my libertarian world view, maybe it’s my Irish blue-collar upbringing, or maybe it’s my experiences in Jamaica that puts a bad taste in my mouth when class is brought to the fore.
So I recommend this book as an historical piece, Diane Bostwick seems to have real first-hand knowledge of those times and events, but I pan it for the class-ism that runs through it.
Vinny 
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