Review; At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid
Description from Goodreads
Jamaica Kincaid's inspired, lyrical short stories
Reading Jamaica Kincaid is to plunge, gently, into another way of seeing both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her voice is, by turns, naively whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partially remembered partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbean—family, manners, and landscape—as distilled and transformed by Kincaid's special style and vision.
Kincaid leads her readers to consider, as if for the first time, the powerful ties between mother and child; the beauty and destructiveness of nature; the gulf between the masculine and the feminine; the significance of familiar things—a house, a cup, a pen. Transfiguring our human form and our surroundings—shedding skin, darkening an afternoon, painting a perfect place—these stories tell us something we didn't know, in a way we hadn't expected.
My Thoughts on the Book
The length varied on these short stories and there were several of them that I really liked. Something else that I really liked was the lyrical language of the author. It's not often that I actually enjoy reading short story collections, or short stories in general, but this is a collection that I can easily recommend.
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