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Title: My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid ISBN: 0-374-52562-5 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 09 November, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.16 (31 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: What was that all about???
Comment: I was only in page 21 (Random House UK edition) when I started crying, and thought, "What a wonderful book this is".
Two hours and 150-plus pages later, after finishing Kincaid's "My Brother", I was asking myself, "What was that all about?"
I have no problem, unlike other reviewers in this forum, with the interesting style used in Kincaid's book. It was very brave of her, in fact, to experiment.
The most annoying element, I thought, about this book is the fact that all your characters are strong, dynamic characters yet the author did not use the opportunity to utilise this advantage. What was offered, instead, was clouded set of stories from an angry author's unimaginative viewpoint.
Kincaid's brother, Devon Drew, died of AIDS at a very young age (he was only thirty-three). He was an intelligent, charming young person, and a dreamer who could have been something. He died, however, as an unknown, "of a disease that had a great shame attached to it."
Their mother is a powerful and, at times, threatening figure. She, of course, is the central character of this biography (despite the fact that its title suggests otherwise). What she did in the past (The burning of Kincaid's books when she was a child) consumes a quarter of "My Brother".
Now, these are two really "good" characters. Somehow, however, Kincaid saw only the banality of her world (and the world of the two), and, in the process, failed to bring home the bacon.
Rating: 4
Summary: Enlightening
Comment: I first read Jamaica Kincaid's work in "Talk Stories", and I loved it.
I discovered this book (My Brother) when reading the book "Writing as a Way of Healing" by Louise DeSalvo. I was curious about Jamaica's life and her writing style intrigued me.
Through her writing, Jamaica brings beauty to even the most difficult of life's experiences. She writes, "That sun, that sun. On the last day of our visit its rays seemed as pointed and unfriendly as an enemy's well-aimed spear."(p.73)
Her writing is honest and balanced between expressing the hard aspects and the kindness within her family life. This book is mostly about her brother dying of AIDS, a very difficult subject matter to read. I also enjoyed reading about how she became a writer, and what it means to her to be a writer.
This book also tells about life in Antigua, which I was especially interested in learning about. The next book I will read by Jamaica is "A Small Place", to learn more about life in Antigua.
Rating: 3
Summary: Where's the story?
Comment: Normally a fan of Jamaica Kincaid, this book was terribly disappointing. Kincaid tells the story of her brother's battle with AIDS . . . well, sort of tells it anyway.
This book tells the reader surprisingly little about any story. Kincaid, wrapped up in age-old animosity toward her mother does not tell the story of her brother's fight with a deadly disease, or the story of her brother's death, or the story of her brother's life, or even her own story of how she dealt with all of this--all of which would have been fascinating stories had they been told. Kincaid's feelings toward her mother seem not quite unfounded to the reader but certainly a bit mysterious. There is deep conflict between the author and her mother but as readers we have only two or three explanations for the mother/daughter difficulty. If this were only mentioned in passing we could overlook this flaw, however, Kincaid is extremely hung up on the issue and the ill feelings toward her mother cloud the true story of the book (whatever that may be).
Kincaid's style, usually quite interesting, was lacking in this book. Her wandering, redundant sentences build her excessively long and redundant paragraphs, which are full of distracting and also redundant parenthetical comments.
However, the book is not without a few strong points. There are some good detailed descriptions--particularly of her brother's physical condition and of specific places. Kincaid also does a fine job of describing her various feelings when she realizes toward the end of the book that she knew her brother even less than she had previously thought (and she never claimed to know much about him to begin with).
My advice is to pass this book by and pick up one of Kincaid's novels, or--even better--get your hands on one of her short stories.
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Title: Mr. Potter: A Novel by Jamaica Kincaid ISBN: 0374528748 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 16 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid ISBN: 0452274664 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid ISBN: 0374527075 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 28 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid ISBN: 0374527342 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 15 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Annie John : A Novel by Jamaica Kincaid ISBN: 0374525102 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 30 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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