At over 500 pages, this might seem a hefty work of reference for a little island. But, as anyone who knows Jamaica will agree, this is not a page too long for the extraordinary cultural heritage this island boasts. The encyclopaedia's alphabetical range from Abeng (the animal horn on which the Maroons blew to communicate over great distances) to Zouave (a uniform worn by the Jamaica Military Band) attests to the compendium of riches amassed here by Olive Senior.

The helpful and generous 12 page bibliography at the back testifies to the great wealth of scholarly writing on Jamaica, much, I would guess, now out of print and hard to find. However future editions might include a wider representation of the recent upsurge in serious reggae writing, for the only reggae book I could find was Barrow & Dalton's 'Reggae: The Rough Guide'.

The book leads with a subject index in eight separate sections, Natural World, Economic Life, Cultural Activities, Folklore, Historic People, Historic Events, Historic Places. Each has its own subsections, so under Economic Life you will find Communications & Transportations, Economic Activities, Trades & Occupations. Herein lies a problem however, for there is no conventional index in which topics are organised alphabetically, so you have to guess the section in which a particular entry will be found. Some entries appear in two different sections, so Ackee is to be found under The Natural World in the Plants subsection, but also appears under Domestic & Leisure Activities in Food & Drink. Other entries can seem arbitrarily placed, for instance 'Albino', found in the 'Beliefs' subsection of 'Folklore', alongside 'Duppy' and 'Obeah', although the albino is a physical reality rather than a belief. Furthermore, if you check the entry you will see a picture of Eighties dancehall artist Yellowman and a considered account of how his celebrity has improved the lot of the albino in Jamaican society, of great interest to the reggae fan. You will not however find Yellowman in the subject index. Under Economic Life, you will search in vain in the Communications and Transportation subsection for any reference to docks, harbour, or shipping.

As a conventional reference book Olive Senior's encyclopaedia can therefore be frustrating, so do as the author recommends, 'dipping into this book at random, and sampling Jamaican culture in a non-hierarchical way.' And what treasures there are to sample. Look at 'Moonshine Baby' and you will find that this is 'a once-popular game played by country children on full moon nights. One child would lie down flat on the ground, the rest would outline his or her body with objects that would shine in the moonlight such as stones, bits of glass, mirrors, broken crockery etc. The fun was derived from making the figure and then leaving it on the ground to frighten passers-by.' And if you think Olive Senior sees Jamaican heritage only through rose-tinted glasses, stumble on the unpromisingly titled Banana Loading and you get a vivid and moving account of how lines of women used to carry the heavy bunches on their heads in never ending lines on to the deck of the ships like a 'human millipede', their work clothes dirty and juice stained from the bananas.

A glaring omission however is politics, for which there is no alphabetical entry or subject heading. Neither are there entries for the People's National Party or the Jamaica Labour Party, or for elections. There is no entry for Eddie Seaga or for Michael Manley, although one does exist for his father Norman Manley. So while the brutal realities of slavery are certainly explored, the brutal realities of contemporary Jamaica, so often bound up with political violence and corruption, are never addressed, locating the darker side of Jamaican life safely in the past.

Likewise, only three pages are devoted to reggae, surely the aspect of Jamaican culture best known to the world at large. There are two pages on the historic town of Falmouth but nothing on Trench Town, known to millions around the world through the work of Bob Marley. Kingston landmarks in general get cursory treatment, emphasising the emphasis here on the rural and the folkloric rather than the urban. Kingston itself gets only three pages, of which two paragraphs address changes since the Sixties.

Olive Senior herself comments reasonably that 'this is an Encyclopaedia of Jamaican Heritage not the Encyclopaedia of Jamaica' and therefore cannot cover everything. Perhaps the issue here is the idea of heritage itself, problematic everywhere in a fast-changing world where heritage can seem no more than a commodity for sale to tourists or electorates. This is especially true for Jamaicans, whose national heritage is inseparable from the fact of slavery and whose current image in the world at large is still depressingly stereotyped either as guns, gangsters and ganja or as rum punches, blue seas and white sand beaches.

Olive Senior defines heritage as 'everything from the past that shapes us and serves as pointers to who we are, both as individuals and a nation' and on one level this thoughtful, scholarly book provides the best possible antidote to such stereotypes. On another level however, the lack of reference to Jamaica's recent past means that to read the encyclopaedia can feel like reading the Jamaica Gleaner, which also offers a range of fascinating features on folklore, cooking and rural life but conspicuously fails to offer much investigative journalism, perhaps because it is simply too dangerous. The reader is left with a sense that what is left out outweighs what is actually reported.

How to engage with Jamaica as it actually is, with its natural beauty and economic hopelessness, its vast human potential and appalling murder rate, its intense spirituality and greedy importation of fast food, global TV and shopping plazas is probably beyond the power of any single reference book at the present time. So, enjoy this book for what it is and on its own terms and, if you love Jamaica, you will love Olive Senior's encyclopaedia.