Annie John: A Novel | Jamaica Kincaid | A real study of life on a Caribbean Island -- A different...

Annie John: A Novel | Jamaica Kincaid | ANOTHER COMING OF AGE STORY

books:

Annie John: A Novel

	Annie John: A Novel Jamaica Kincaid Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997 - 148 pages average customer review:based on 74 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Annie John is a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua. A classic coming-of-age story in the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Kincaid?s novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood. Annie?s voice?urgent, demanding to be heard?is one that will not soon be forgotten by readers.

An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl?s existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother?s benign shadow. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, ?It was in such a paradise that I lived.? When she turns twelve, however, Annie?s life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she instinctively rebels against authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a ?young lady,? ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary. At the end of her school years, Annie decides to leave Antigua and her family, but not without a measure of sorrow, especially for the mother she once knew and never ceases to mourn. ?For I could not be sure,? she reflects, ?whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world."

for more information click here

A real study of life on a Caribbean Island -- A different review

This book reads like poetry. Ms Kincaid describes simple acts (such as doing laundry) with detail and with the perspective of a young girl. I tend to read an author's complete works. I have done so with Amy Tan and Paule Marshall. I was aware of Jamaica Kincaid but had never read her until Amy Tan named "Annie John" and "Lolita" as the 2 books which influenced her the most.
Ms Kincaid includes the small stuff which add up and leave the reader with the smell of Antiguan food cooking, and girls attending school wearing English-style uniforms.
This is a book that I will read and read again. I hope you enjoy it.

for more information click here

ANOTHER COMING OF AGE STORY

This coming of age story is sensitive and tranquil. It doesn't shout but is sound. Poetic writing. Worth a detour.

A Fine Line Between Love and Hate

At first, I was a bit wary about wanting to read this text as "Lucy" had not been one of my favorites. "Annie John" however, for being such a slim novel, was packed with the issues that result from teen angst in combination with the ever problematic relationship of a mother and daughter.
Annie and her mother start off with a wonderfully intimate relationship that Annie likens to "paradise" only to see it crumble as Annie matures into a sexual being, becoming TOO MUCH like her mother. It is at this time that Annie goes looking outside the home to replace the mother she now calls "serpent." Once expelled from paradise, Annie does what she can to spite her mother by thieving and hanging out with girls her mother disapproves of.
Like "Lucy," "Annie John" seems to have an evil side to her. She is angry and flawed as well as self-loathing and arrogant. In other words, she is turmoil personified. Her dark side is one reason I found this book so readable, but perhaps the most compelling thing about the novel is the mother/daughter relationship. Perhaps no one has figured out why such relationships are seemingly always fraught with intense animosity and competition, but Kincaid certainly relates the horrific reality of the fact quite convincingly.
While this story certainly contains no idealistic or happy ending, it is rich in psychology and what can only be deemed as troubling personal experience on the part of the author.
I recommend this one to any woman (or man)who ever experienced the fine line of love and hate with her own mother once upon a time.

for more information click here

Lovely writing but not Kincaid's best

This novel has the same beautiful, flowing, sparkling language as LUCY, which I loved. The sentences are a joy to read (they reminded me a little of Thom Jones, with their relentless, driving, dialogue-free qualities). This is essentially a slice-of-life story about Annie's teenage years in the West Indies that ends with her leaving for England. Annie is an interesting and complex character and I admired the unquestioning way in which we are told about her falling in love (crush?) with Gwen and the Red Girl. There is a wonderfully female sensibility in this book, the kind that is confident enough to portray women in all their complexity, as bad and as good, as able to wish well and able to rejoice in other's pain. However, the mother-daughter relationship did not convince me. I felt as if the writer knew more about this relationship than the reader was being told and so when I came to the sentence `I no longer loved my mother,' I did not believe it because I had seen to reason for this. The mother changes as the daughter gets older and, even making room for normal teenage angst, there were parts of the narrative that seemed determined to have the mother and daughter estranged even if it was not organic to the rest of the narrative. Of course, this happens in real life all the time but the demands of fiction are different - the reader should not be expected to make assumptions from `real life.' Still, Jamaica Kincaid is a brilliant writer. Her language is superb and her story-telling, even if not best demonstrated here, is remarkable.

for more information click here