MIGUEL STREET.

iguel Street," by V. S. Naipaul, is a beguiling book about growing up in the West Indies. The sketches are written lightly, so that tragedy is understated and comedy is overstated, yet the ring of truth always prevails. A comparison with "Porgy and Bess" has been suggested. The parallel has at least the merit of reminding us that the whole world is one. In that hospitable mood we might also remember Mark Twain's tales of life on the Mississippi. But Miguel Street, in Trinidad, is not really very much like Catfish Row, nor are reminders of nineteenth-century Missouri prevalent. What is true and, if you will, significant about Mr. Naipaul's book is that it presents a world of its own excellently. The time of that world is the late Nineteen Thirties and most of the Nineteen Forties on a sunny slum street in Port of Spain. Here the young narrator of the story and his Hindu relatives live in a community as heterogeneous as, say, that of Manhattan Island.