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My Brother | 
 enlarge | Author: Jamaica Kincaid
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $19.00
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Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 934981
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 197
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0374216819
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780374216818
ASIN: 0374216819
Publication Date: October 30, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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Amazon.com 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.
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 A Dark Jewel of a Book February 17, 1998
JeffreyJGH (USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
A dark jewel of a book, a monstrous little book is this one by Jamaica Kincaid. Not only is it a mesmerizing incantation delineating the details of her brother's death from AIDS, but it also shines a light on the sometimes tenuous relationship she has had with her overbearing mother. The prose style is so spare and so haunting that it reminds one immediately of the works of Marguerite Duras and Annie Ernaux. An excellent, excellent book!
Minimalist Masterpiece July 23, 2000
KSG (New York, NY United States)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I read this book a few years ago and I still think about it daily. With My Brother, Ms. Kincaid has taken a very personal matter, the death of her brother, and sliced it down to it's essentials.
Lean, just like Hemingway.
 Seeing my brother die. March 31, 1999
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is written by Jamaica Kincaid.All though this book mainly focous on her brother Devon who is dieing of aids but it creates pictures to readers how she dealed with her family. mostly how she had so much problems with her. Her brother Devon a man with no self control over his own life. Devon is man who never seems to learn lessons from his mistakes. after being trated with AZT for having AIDS and being releasd from the Hospital he goes back to his regular act.The action that had already put him in treatment for AIDS. Jamaica aiso mentions her childhood with her mother. And how insensetive her mother was torwards her children. She aiso compares her life now and how it was then with her mother. And she broke the cyicle of being like her mother. This book is full of memories with different feelings. It's about life, happiiness and sadness that covers our daily life . I think from reading this book the main idea is that no matter how old we are and no matter how sad or happy memories had they are never forgetfull.
 INTERESTING STYLE April 17, 2001
Gayla Collins (Sheridan, WYOMING USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a poignant book, written much like a journal. It is lyrical prose mourning the loss of Kincaid's brother from AIDS, and in a greater sense the loss of her childhood stolen by a demanding mother, ill father, and half-brothers who drained the family provisions. My eyes were opened to abject proverty that I, as an American, know so little about. Antigua is so improverished the hospital is just a holding place for death. Only through Jamaica's efforts, is her brother afforded any medications. The story is poignant and expressive. Perhaps, because it reads like a mourning journal, I never felt comfortable reading it, and was relieved to complete this short novel. Not my favorite book, but worth reading, not the least reason being education.
A Complicated Work April 14, 2002
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'm still thinking through the issues raised in "My Brother" -- and I suspect that it will be one of those books which, though it feels a bit hollow as I read it, will turn out to haunt me in the future. Only time will tell. The most remarkable thing about it, I think, is the way that Kincaid refuses to valorize any of the characters she describes. The incredible ire towards her mother is the only emotion that feels puzzling, given the lack of context for it -- I kept waiting for a revelation there that never came. With this exception, however, Kincaid seems committed to presenting a balanced portrayal: she does not heroize the dead, nor does she portray herself as particularly wise or noble in the face of death. It is this commitment to a human, complex portrayal that makes the description unique.I just want to add that I am only posting this to counteract what appears to be a long list of high school book reports that make up most of the "reviewing" on this page. ...
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