Garfield Ellis, writer of 'Such As I Have' and 'For Nothing At All'. It's a story of men divided by a warped sense of geography grafittied on their psyche and identity by political wrangling and scheming. - Andrew Smith, Photography Editor

Title: For Nothing At All

Author: Garfield Ellis

Publishers: MacMillan International

Reviewer: Tanya Batson-Savage

Garfield Ellis' ForNothing At All is an emotionally-wrenching tale of politics, boyhood and force-ripe manhood. Published by Macmillan Caribbean Writers Series, it is a story that displays the hearts of men and boys and paints a shudder-inducing picture of how politics infiltrates and warps friendships.

For Nothing At All is the story of a group of boyhood friends - Colin, Stevie, Skin, Spragga and Patrick - who live in Central Village. They live on the borderland between rival fractions and the violence soon moves from the outskirts into their community. The story meanders between the day the boys became very close friends and the friendship as it imploded. It's a story of men divided by a warped sense of geography grafittied on their psyche and identity by political wrangling and scheming.

As such, it moves from scenes of boyhood adventures to scenes of violence and strife, and its significance extends well beyond the boys to the others in the village. Indeed, For Nothing at All is pregnant with contemporary relevance, as it deals with people living on a political divide. Without ever approaching a soap box, it tells the story of people people living ordinary but too often tragic lives. Yet, women are almost completely absent and rarely emerge from the background of the story. When they do, their presence is only momentary.

Ellis highlights that the creation of manhood is affected by stories found in literature and film, which is somewhat reminiscent of Michael Thelwell's The Harder They Come, based on the film by the same name. As such, generic cowboys, James Bond and Tom Sawyer walk through the pages of For Nothing At All, not merely referenced by the boys, but echoed in their view of reality.

The cowboys make the most frequent appearance, suggesting that these boys are attempting to pattern their lives off the Western. As such, when Skin is demonstrating how to fire a gun, he does it as though he is the star of his own film:

"The gun empty, Skin did not put it into his bag but stuffed it behind him into the waist of his pants. He then ducked, fell to the ground and retrieved it in a flash like a cowboy in a gunfight. Then he rolled on the grass away from me, pointing the gun around, "Bam, bam, badam!"

Generally, Ellis uses very lyrical language that taps into the core of the characters' pain as the characters move from friendship to rivalry and Ellis places politics at the centre of this divide. He explores how politics warped the physical and mental geography and highlights the narrator's sense of isolation in a growingly alien and dangerous landscape as highlighted in chapter four:

"I walked slowly down the hill. The gunman behind me was not the boy who was my friend or a man I could ever know. But the place I walked was a strange land, for the walls and the fences that once gleamed with paint and whitewash were now covered with slogans and the faces of politicians made blurry by the shifting light of the moon. And the words on the walls meant nothing to me. And the trees and the poles we had used as bases when we played chevy chase, and where we would sit to tell stories in the light that shone from the bulbs on them, these poles were now covered with paintings and tags and threats of a new and ugly time."

The result is that For Nothing At All is hauntingly beautiful as it dramatically shifts between lighthearted boyhood and a threatening present. Unfortunately, though Ellis beautifully renders the divide that exists between the boys as they approach manhood, he does not sufficiently detail how this divide came about and that leads to much frustration.

Yet, For Nothing At All is an engaging read that cuts to the core of a societal problem, but has sufficient narrative style to last beyond any contemporary relevance as it deals with the timeless issues of boyhood, friendship and manhood.