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Jamaica Kincaid presents a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua. An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence at 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." 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, Annie John 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.… (more)
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Annie wasn't a likeable character, though I suppose few young teenage girls are likeable in real
Annie has a tendency to become obsessed with her friends. She lets one girl become the focus of her world and then, just as quickly, she loses interest in her and moves on. Kincaid has said in interviews that she never meant for Annie's character to be interpreted as gay, but at the same time, the relationships feel more like crushes than friendships.
As a child Annie idolizes her mother, but as she grows older she begins to hate her. She develops a deep resentment of her mother and never overcomes it. The book skirts around many issues and in doing so left me wanting. It touches on depression, giving the reader a glimpse of that condition in Annie, but just as quickly drops it. Overall it was an interesting read, but didn't really work for me.
If the basic story sounds good I'd recommend, The Meaning of Consuelo and The House on Mango Street. I enjoyed both of those books more than Annie John and they have similar premises.
This is a beautiful book, this story of a girl growing up in Antigua. I’ve never read a clearer and more sensitive description of adolescence, and of the relationship between mother and daughter. You enter the character of Annie John absolutely, and see everything from her eyes.
The stories are
However, for me the book added up to less than the sum of its parts - the episodic nature of the stories, and the simple language, combined to leave it feeling a little insubstantial - like the life of a young niece that you meet every few years for a short time. I would have liked to see more of what made Annie tick, and the development of how she grew up.
Initially she's very close with her mother, but as she matures, she develops an irrational vicious resentment against her. She explores proto-lesbian friendships with other girls, in which she experiences again that cycle of
I was interested in this book for its insight into life on Antigua, as I was visiting the island, and there is some of that here- but the main focus is on the (odd) psychology of Annie's character.
Set in the Caribbean paradise of the
Unlike the Little House series, as Annie reaches adolescence after a loving childhood, a darkness develops between the main character and her mother. Annie sees her mother as over-critical and unloving. Annie's mother actually loves her deeply but doesn't quite understand her daughter and longs to protect her, trying to cage her free spirit.
I usually don't read the entry in [1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die] before reading the book, since some of the entries contain spoilers. This time, however, it would have been interesting to read at least this part of the entry as the colonialism parallel escaped me. (blush)
... ”the troubled mother-daughter relationship that mirrors the motherland-colony problem, the mental distress of the dominated woman, and the urge to escape from the cage via migration. " p 761.
This is a nice quick, lyrical read, something that could
Some quotes: "My unhappiness was something inside me, and when I closed my eyes I could even see it. It sat somewhere --maybe in my belly, maybe in my heart; I could not exactly tell--and it took the shape of a small black ball, all wrapped up in cobwebs."
and
"For I could not be sure 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. I highlighted this last part because of having just read Between the World and Me.
Quotes
Fish, lying: "When I got home, my mother asked me for the fish I was to have picked up from
Swimming, or not: "My mother was a superior swimmer. When she plunged into the seawater, it was as if she had always lived there. She would go far out if it was safe to do so, and she could tell just by looking at the way the waves beat if it was safe to do so. She could tell if a shark was nearby, and she had never been stung by a jellyfish. I, on the other hand, could not swim at all. In fact, if I was in water up to my knees I was sure that I was drowning. My mother had tried everything to get me swimming, from using a coaxing method to just throwing me without a word into the water. Nothing worked. The only way I could go into the water was if I was on my mother’s back, my arms clasped tightly around her neck, and she would then swim around not too far from the shore. It was only then that I could forget how big the sea was, how far down the bottom could be, and how filled up it was with things that couldn’t understand a nice hallo. When we swam around in this way, I would think how much we were like the pictures of sea mammals I had seen, my mother and I, naked in the seawater, my mother sometimes singing to me a song in a French patois I did not yet understand, or sometimes not saying anything at all. I would place my ear against her neck, and it was as if I were listening to a giant shell, for all the sounds around me - the sea, the wind, the birds screeching - would seem as if they came from inside her, the way the sounds of the sea are in a seashell. Afterward, my mother would take me back to the shore, and I would lie there just beyond the farthest reach of a big wave and watch my mother as she swam and dove."
Abandoned lighthouse: "The Red Girl and I walked to the top of the hill behind my house. At the top of the hill was an old lighthouse. It must have been a useful lighthouse at one time, but now it was just there for mothers to say to their children, “Don’t play at the lighthouse,” my own mother leading the chorus, I am sure. Whenever I did go to the lighthouse behind my mother’s back, I would have to gather up all my courage to go to the top, the height made me so dizzy. But now I marched boldly up behind the Red Girl as if at the top were my own room, with all my familiar comforts waiting for me. At the top, we stood on the balcony and looked out toward the sea. We could see some boats coming and going; we could see some children our own age coming home from games; we could see some sheep being driven home from pasture; we could see my father coming home from work."
Set on the beautiful island of Antigua, Annie grows up in a close knit community that has many benefits, but to a mischievous child, can also be a little too observant. Annie’s relationship with her mother was particularly compelling as we see her go through the various love-hate feelings that young girls often feel towards their mothers.
I enjoyed this story and feel that I now have a fairly accurate picture of a Caribbean childhood, along with a closer look at the customs, style and food of this unique corner of the world.