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For Nothing At All

“For Nothing At All, has been rapturously received in Jamaica; this poignant, unsettling book should be read by anyone who wishes to understand this beautiful, bedevilled island.”

Ian Thomson, The Times Literary Supplement

 

“Ellis in his novel effectively uses children who are supposed to be innocent and sheltered from the harms of society to express the dire effects that corrupt Caribbean politics has on their lives and futures… The voice of young children certainly adds a different critical perspective to the landscape of Caribbean literature.”

The Jamaica Observer

 

“For Nothing At All is an emotionally wrenching tale of politics, boyhood, and force-ripe manhood … 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.”

Tanya Batson-Savage, The Sunday Gleaner

 

Ellis' use of language is flawless ... For Nothing At All undoubtedly solidifies his position as a frontrunner in a growing field of Jamaican authors who seek to narrate their language and world in their own language and style.  Yet this is a timeless novel that will appeal to the humanity in us all."

Nadia I. Johnson, Arthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal

Wesley was the bright one, the one out of all of his friends who was going to do well. But as the years passed the friends grew apart, forced by circumstances along dark paths of corruption and death, devotion or madness, leaving their sunlit dreams in tatters. When Wes graduated with the best results the school had ever seen, he couldn't get a job. It was the boys who left school before him that seemed to do well with their weed, flashy clothes, guns and new cars. Even so, he seemed like the only one with a chance, not trapped by the system. Until Danny Bruck moved in on him.

About the author
Garfield Ellis was born in 1960, the eldest of nine children in Central Village, Jamaica. In his varied career he has worked as a marine engineering officer, as engineering supervisor in property management, as the marketing and placement director of the Jamaica Maritime Institute, and is now the Operations Manager at the Jamaica Observer. His first published collection of short stories, Flaming Hearts, and a later unpublished novel both won the Una Marson award. He has also won the Canute A Brodhurst prize for fiction and the 1990 Heineman/Lifestyle short story competition. For Nothing At All is his second novel for MCW, the first being Such As I Have (2003).