AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER (Aventura: The Vintage Library of Contemporary World Literatu) - Softcover

Kincaid, Jamaica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394736834 ISBN 13: 9780394736839

Publisher: Vintage, 1985

Synopsis

This collection is Jamaica Kincaid's earliest published writings: her inspired, lyrical short stories.

These stories plunge the listener gently into another way of perceiving both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her narrative is, by turns, naïvely whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partially remembered, partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbean -- family, manners, and landscape -- as distilled and transformed by Kincaid's special style and vision.

Kincaid leads us to consider, as if for the first time, the powerful ties between mother and child, the beauty and destructiveness of nature, the gulf between the masculine and the feminine, the significance of such familiar things as a house, a cup, a pen. Transfiguring our human form and our surroundings -- shedding skin, darkening an afternoon, painting a perfect place -- these stories tell us something we didn't know, in a way we hadn't expected.

About this title

About the Author:

Jamaica Kincaid, born in St. John's, Antigua, is the author of short stories, novels, and nonfiction. Her 2013 novel See Now Then was a New York Times bestseller. A former reporter for the New Yorker magazine, she is a professor of literature at Claremont-McKenna College in California.

Review:

''These stories have all of poetry's virtues -- care for language, joy in the sheer sounds of words, and evocative power...beautiful to listen to.'' --Anne Tyler, New York Times bestselling author

''Eccentric, visionary pieces...[with] all the force of illumination and even prophetic power.'' --New York Times Book Review

''Her first collection is flecked with individuality and talent especially in the more ironic sequences...Kincaid shows vivid promise in this slim debut.'' --Kirkus Reviews

''She jumps with grace and ease from the mundane to the enormous, and, fascinated, we believe her.'' --Village Voice

''Hers is a voice you have never heard before...Exhilarating to read and impossible to forget.'' --Washington Post Book World

''The voice -- incantatory, lyric, rhapsodic -- is closer to the condition of poetry and music than to fiction in any of its ordinary registers.'' --Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0394736834
• ISBN 13: 9780394736839
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 82