While younger writers obsess over the need to show rather than tell, the octogenarian West simply grabs you by the lapels and drags you headlong through a multigenerational saga of affluent, Martha's Vineyard blacks who are so fair in complexion that they're almost white. And she does it all in something like 225 pages, sounding very much like Faulkner even when she's over the top, which is only now and then. You won't mind, because there is greatness here as well as gripping storytelling.