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Valmiki's Daughter is a readable family saga that conjures up vivid pictures of life in Trinidad, a complex culture rich with tradition and contradiction. In it, Shani Mootoo has created a fabulous character, Valmiki Krishnu, a racist, chauvinist, homophobic bigot who is himself the victim of racism, chauvinism and homophobia. A devoted family man and successful doctor, Valmiki pursues a love affair with a man from a lower class than his own, while having it off with multiple female partners - often in his office while his patients wait to see him - in an effort to prove his masculinity to his peers. Mootoo's depiction of this man is completely convincing; he is weak and despicable, rather adorable and very sympathetic.

Valmiki's Daughter, by Shani Mootoo, Anansi, 395 pages, $29.95

Valmiki's wife, Devika, is as conflicted as her husband; she knows what he does and the lies he tells, but she has decided to live with it, her only response to throw the occasional elaborate and expensive party. When the wife of Valmiki's lover rushes up to her in the market and claims they are alike - "You and me, we in this thing together" - Devika recoils.

Despite all the material advantages her family's position grants her, with parents like these, Valmiki's daughter, Viveka, doesn't really stand a chance in life, or in fiction. On the page, she is pale in comparison with her rowdy papa, uncertain about her own sexuality, unhappy in her own skin, channelling her dead brother, the family's only son. As well as the spirit of Anand, the ghost of V. S. Naipaul haunts Viveka through her study of the literatures of the West Indies, as it haunts this novel. In a self-defeating and heavily authorial aside, Viveka notes that Naipaul "hadn't ever really paid attention in his work to the presence of blacks in the country"; Mootoo doesn't pay much heed to this either, though her upper-class characters are obsessed with class and race while unable to move beyond either in any meaningful way.

“ At its best, Mootoo's novel is possessed of a droll, knowing humour ”

Viveka's sexual awakening is the main subject of this novel, and Mootoo writes about sexual desire well, in passages that are precise and explicit. Valmiki recognizes the ambivalence in his daughter's approach to the world and, late in the novel, tries to encourage her to leave Trinidad, to allow her to escape the double standards and hypocrisies that have ruled his own life. But Viveka is too conflicted and confused for any real clarity.

While Mootoo is capable of writing prose of great immediacy and resonance, too much of the novel is devoted to rather bland exposition, huge chunks of text given over to characters this reader was not that interested in, a family friend and his French wife, both of whom are pivotal to the plot but thinly realized, despite the acreage of back story.

Chunks of prose written in the second person frame the narrative; there are four of these sections, each called Your Journey, and they are addressed to the reader who, Mootoo seems to assume, is reading the novel in lieu of some kind of tourist experience. This direct address to the non-Trinidadian reader is off-putting, and has the effect of placing the story at an exotic remove, as though Mootoo feels the only way we can relate to her tale is if we view Trinidad through the lens of a glossy travel brochure.

She is wrong, and she is a better writer than these passages indicate; Valmiki himself takes us to the heart of the eruptions and disruptions of family life in this vivid and, yes, colourful, country, where tradition rubs up against modernity and sparks fires. It's as though Mootoo is saying, "Why travel to Trinidad when you can read this book instead? So much cheaper, none of that heat and bother."

But the story of the Krishnu family is compelling and, at its best, Mootoo's novel is possessed of a droll, knowing humour. Valmiki's Daughter gives us a view of Trinidad we have not had before.

Kate Pullinger's new novel, The Mistress of Nothing, will be published next year.