This is a fairly low-key story that's both about going home again and never going home. Peter, who has been away from his Saint Lucia home for eight years, studying in the UK, makes a short visit back for a week or two until he goes on to teach elsewhere. His parents, brother, old school friends, and his estranged wife await him, and really I'm only interested in two of those. Not long before he left, Peter got a girl pregnant, and he married her rather than lose his social standing. Their twin children were born and died while he was gone, and he's got no real interest in his wife, feeling that he's outgrown her; this is contrasted with his brother Paul, who also got a girl pregnant but refused to marry her. That torpedoed his life and lost him a career, and Paul is left as a very indifferent parent to a child he doesn't want after his ex-lover threw herself into the ocean. 

It's all very literary, focused as it is on migration and social standing, and some of the character work is very good (although this is a short novel, with not a lot of space for development, so many of the characters are little more than sketches). When I say I'm only interested in two of the above relationships, however... it's a very mild interest. I can see that this book's well-written, but it's not really grabbing my attention. Perhaps I'd be more compelled if Phyllis were the main character, but then again she does come across as essentially static here, a sort of Penelope figure who does nothing but wait - and substantially more passively than the original - so perhaps not.