AnyBook4Less.com
Find the Best Price on the Web
Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Developed by Fintix
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |  
 
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money

At the Bottom of the River

Please fill out form in order to compare prices
Title: At the Bottom of the River
by Jamaica Kincaid
ISBN: 0-374-52734-2
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Pub. Date: 15 October, 2000
Format: Paperback
Volumes: 1
List Price(USD): $11.00
Your Country
Currency
Delivery
Include Used Books
Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble
Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5
Summary: A Genius Mind
Comment: At the Bottom of the River is a lovely rendition of a writer's mind, leisure, vision, appeal, hope, awareness and understanding. This project surpasses what the common reader readies for in the telling of a good story. Each sentence in this work is a story. I will write it again: Each sentence is a story with perfect images, "The branches were dead; a fly hung dead on the branches, its fragile body fluttering in the wind as if it were remnants of a beautiful gown." Ms. Kincaid's style throughout At the Bottom might put one in the mind of Gertrude Stein. The repetition. Certainly, however, Ms. Kincaid's project is her own, very distinctive genius. It takes us to a place that lacks anything hackneyed and it is shaped with qualities that peck at our curiousity. The book works in first person and third person never conveniently laying the story out as a consecutive. But there are characters; there is a central character to follow. The movement is chopped with these extraordinary, brilliant images beyond description and most every sentence leaves on the tongue the question of "who did that?" or "why?": "Someone is making a basket, someone is making a girl a dress or a boy a shirt, someone is making her husband a soup with cassava so that he can take it to the cane field tomorrow, someone is making his wife a beautiful mahogany chest, someone is sprinkling a colorless powder outside a closed door so that someone else's child will be stillborn." And so you get these incredible juxtapositions along side wholesome chops of fascinating imagery. We move through childhood, through relationships, through friendships, through parents and through self. And there is even dialogue for the reader who whines that there is no plot.

Ms. Kincaid writes this piece in a style that is deeply dense and in a way we are able to see, on the pages, a character's mind, discovery, understanding and wonder (no part of nature is left unturned). We are even privy to questions and philosophy and resignations about life and death. In this piece Ms. Kincaid gives new meaning to "the universal eye".

At the Bottom of the River is brilliant, genius! A must read!

Rating: 5
Summary: Lovely
Comment: Kincaid's stories have a distinct voice and accent, which perpetuate the subversion of standard rules prescribed by centres of authority. She appropriates that authority, by indulging in a style of writing which is unique (the two page sentences) and the inversion of punctuation and syntax canons. Her plotless stories describe a state of being which is fractured, which has no beginning or an end, which is struggling to come to terms with its marginalized existence in terms of race, color, gender and economic status. Being an immigrant in USA, the nameless character's struggle for self-definition, identity, and a truncated and oppressed past transfigure powerfully in this collection. The sense of dislocation encountered in her journey to America, the traveling from the Carribean to a new country, a new culture and discourse in which she must chart her own path towards self-discovery, enlightenment out her 'blackness', the assertion of her 'girl'hood, can only be relocated in vague forms 'at the bottom of the river'.

Effectively disruptive, beautiful, introspective and soulful. Read this book if you are colored or an immigrant. Read this book even if your aren't colored or an immigrant. You'll love it.

Rating: 5
Summary: Prose Like Water
Comment: In its strangeness is its beauty.
I won't pretend to have understood this book. At times I'd put it down and think, huh? But the overall impression was that of the privilege of listening in on the unstructured flow of a person's thoughts-- of following the mystical journey that takes a Caribbean girl to womanhood-- of the complicated relationship between a mother and her daughter-- and more.
Still, after having read it, I still wonder, what was that about? But I feel better having read it. I feel smarter. I feel wise. I know that I have learned something. It might take me a while to figure out what it was.
Enjoy.

Similar Books:

Title: A Small Place
by Jamaica Kincaid
ISBN: 0374527075
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Pub. Date: 28 April, 2000
List Price(USD): $11.00
Title: My Brother
by Jamaica Kincaid
ISBN: 0374525625
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Pub. Date: 09 November, 1998
List Price(USD): $11.00
Title: The Autobiography of My Mother
by Jamaica Kincaid
ISBN: 0452274664
Publisher: Plume
Pub. Date: January, 1997
List Price(USD): $13.00
Title: Lucy: A Novel
by Jamaica Kincaid
ISBN: 0374527350
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Pub. Date: 04 September, 2002
List Price(USD): $12.00
Title: Annie John : A Novel
by Jamaica Kincaid
ISBN: 0374525102
Publisher: Noonday Press
Pub. Date: 30 June, 1997
List Price(USD): $11.00

Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!

Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments

Powered by Apache