A small sickly boy sits on the porch of his house with his grandmother and carefully studies the ants who share this porch with him. It's 1960 Petit-Goave, and the ants are images of the town in which he lives. They go about their business with little or no concern, other than silence, about the larger world around them. Author Laferriere uses the youth of his narrator to paint a vivid and detailed picture of life in this small village, in which two cars can't co-exist since there's no room for both on the one lane roads of town.

Is this an autobiographical memory of a childhood in provincial Haiti? One comes to believe so in the text, and then has this view confirmed in the second volume under review -- the follow up of the first. Is it poetry with its vivid descriptions of the most minute details of everyday life? Almost certainly. Is Laferriere a cultural anthropologist detailing images of life in a Haitian village. That too, and certainly much more successful in this role when dealing with the Petit Goave of his youth that the last days of Papa Doc's Port-au-Prince in the second volume. And is AN AROMA OF COFFEE a captivating and delightful read -- ah, most certainly.

The narrator follows the events of daily life. There's really no story here, it's sort of a journal of the life of a dozen or so folks, carrying on their normal routines. School kids flirting and getting into mischief, village gossips, deciding every person's business and motives. The key figure is Da, the boy's grandmother, sitting on her porch always ready to pour a cup of coffee for each passer-by, in exchange for the news of the day.

Laferriere paints a delightful, colorful, vivid picture of this everydayness that rings as true of Haiti today as of the Haiti of some 35 years ago that it celebrates.

One of the most fascinating episodes in the book is the village response to two events. Big Simon has won the state lottery and finally is able to purchase the cameon he has always wanted. But, Big Simon's daughter has died a day or two later. What is the meaning of this coincidence, or was it really coincidence? Laferriere treats this village mystery by having many characters relate their own version.