Hello my lovely readers! Another day, another book review. Let's get into it.
SYNOPSIS
Jamaica Kincaid’s brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on January 19, 1996, at the age of thirty-three. Kincaid’s incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother’s life and death is also a story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer’s mother. My Brother is an unblinking record of a life that ended too early, and it speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families.
MY THOUGHTS
This was another book that I really wanted to love, but it just didn't deliver. I know a lot of people say you shouldn't review memoirs because it's the author's lived experience, but I have no qualms about reviewing them! I'm not reviewing their lives, but more so the actual storytelling.
That being said, this memoir was one long stream of consciousness. No breaks, no chapters. It was extremely repetitive and I can assure you, there were two paragraphs that were repeated.
Due to Kincaid's lack of relationship with her mother, her dying brother and the rest of her family, the memoir came across as lacking empathy. She and her mother had a fraught relationship, but it seemed like Kincaid couldn't empathize with her mom who had just lost a son, which is surprising given that Kincaid is a mother herself and was when this memoir was written/published.
All in all, the memoir just didn't work for me. I appreciate Kincaid's honesty, though!
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