My Brother - Hardcover

Kincaid, Jamaica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374216819 ISBN 13: 9780374216818

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997

Synopsis

Jamaica Kincaid's incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother Devon Drew's life is also the story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer's mother. Kincaid's unblinking record of a life that ed too early speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families.

About this title

Review:

Compassion only occasionally lightens the grim tone of Jamaica Kincaid's searing account of her younger brother Devon's 1996 death from AIDS. As in novels such as Annie John, Kincaid is ruthlessly honest about her ambivalence toward the impoverished Caribbean nation from which she fled, her restrictive family, and the culture that imprisoned Devon. That honesty, which includes chilling detachment from her brother's suffering, is sometimes alienating. But art has its own justifications. The bitter clarity of Kincaid's prose and the tangled, undeniably human feelings it lucidly dissects are justification enough.

About the Author:

Jamaica Kincaid's books include At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, A Small Place, Lucy, and The Autobiography of My Mother. She lives in Vermont.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0374216819
• ISBN 13: 9780374216818
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 197