My Brother
Info
- Author: Jamaica Kincaid
- Genre: Suspense
- Publisher: The Noonday Press
- Type: Official Non-Fiction Book
- Release: Nov 09, 1998
- ASIN/ISBN: 0374525625
- Rating:
- Status: Read (210 Pages)
Review
On Oct 25, 2007 Corinne said:
One of the most amazing books you will ever read. My reaction to this book was instant. It was one of the books I read during my first semester freshman year of college and it really took me by surprise.
Kincaid's honesty and willingness to share both of herself and her family draws you in. If you never read non-fiction make the sacrifice and read this.
Details
Reading novelist Kincaid's prose is like learning all over again why one writes: to sift endlessly, reorder, and distill one's raw, cluttered experience so that what emerges is, quite simply, perfect. Kincaid has written most recently about her mother (The Autobiography of My Mother, LJ 1/96), and indeed is still writing about her mother, though obliquely, in this memoir of her youngest brother, who died at age 33 from AIDS. Kincaid did not know until after his death that he was homosexual; she had not seen him for 20 years before his illness. In gently insistent, incantatory prose, she recounts their forced reunion, the complicated feelings his illness evokes, the pity and anger she feels for a life senselessly squandered, and her coming to love him as he lay dying. Being back in her native Antigua, and especially near her mother, stirs powerful and painful memories, and in the end Kincaid's achievement is most valuable for how she has transformed her grief into a monument to beauty and permanence. A stunning work; for all collections.
-Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"