Publisher: 4th Estate Ltd - £10

Jacob Ross is an extraordinarily gifted writer who combines human warmth and sympathy with musical sentences and a masterly sense of form. I have loved Ross's short stories for years, and although I am still only half way through Pynter Bender l want to share my sense that everyone should read it - bringing back to warm, breathing life a Caribbean world that has slipped into the past. You writers out there - read Mr Ross to see what good writing is. I'm a writer, and I envy the man's velvety richness of texture and the quiet confidence with which he makes his characters believable and touching. Ross is particularly good on women and on the relationships between them - an unusual and welcome gift for a male writer. I am loving this book which gathers power with every page.