Brother

3.5:

Picked this up based on recommendations, but also because I reaaally dig the cover art, it's so pretty!

Now, this book touches upon relevant topics, such as masculinity, police brutality, the immigrant experience, grief, heritage, race, and many more. It's very slow paced, but quite short, so it's a fast read.

Despite being beautifully written, and very touching, in the end it didn't hit quite as hard as I expected it to, but I feel like that's on me. Still, there were moments that shook me, such as the knife incident with Francis, and that part where they go to Trinidad, and sleep next to each other on the floor.

Again, this was very beautifully written, and maybe I'll give it another go, when I'm in a different state of mind.

Oh and also, FUCK the police.

somehow informative. the many flashbacks played with my brain a little since i listened to the audiobook. i didn't feel like a lot happened tbh

Every once in a while I find a book that is so good, so compelling that I find myself reading it in every free minute. While I'm waiting for my eggs to be ready to flip, read a few pages, while I'm in the elevator to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer, read a few more, while eating dinner, read more, read and read before bed until you are so tired you read the same paragraph six times before finally having to admit, one hour after you normally are asleep, you really can't possibly read any more. A book of this length often takes a week or more for me and this was done in two days. And now I'm sad because it's over and I'll never read it for the first time again and these characters I love will be gone. I'll miss them.

I've been to this part of Scarborough several times, sometimes going to visit the library in the area on a project to visit all of Toronto's libraries. Other times I cycled through the Rouge valley myself. So of course I had a lot of mental images as I read. And now when I ride through there on my bike again part of me will be looking for folks, wondering how they're all doing.

This one's going to be a hard one to follow.

Brother, by David Chariandy, is an important and timely novel. It is composed with language that is precise and rhythmic. It is a novel that jumps around in time quite a bit, and only provides the pieces which frame the story in the concluding chapters. Once assembled, the story is perhaps a bit thin.

Largely, Brother is character driven and this is where it is strongest. As a character-focused reader, I thought the cast was great, but this 170-page novel didn't give ample room for everyone to be developed as much as I would've liked. I had a good sense of Michael and Francis, the main foci of the story, but would've appreciated more from secondary characters such as Jelly and Aisha.

Overall, this is a good novel. My biggest critiques are that it is disjointed and not developed as fully as I would've liked, but the skeleton of a great story is here, and the life that pulsate through these pages is strong.

Beautiful, and, damn, so hard to organize my thoughts for this one. For me it struck chords of living on the edges of society, never belonging or fitting in anywhere: Francis, the hep older brother whose assertiveness masks tragic insecurities; Michael, our narrator, seemingly ineffectual, living in his brother's shadow, paralyzed by his own more overt insecurities; their mother, an immigrant having long lost the hope of an education and better life for herself, fiercely pushing that dream on her uncomprehending children. All of them bearing crushing responsibilities, trapped in bleak circumstances; and then, after a tragedy, trapping their own selves even further.

There's so much I'm thinking but just can't express, and really, why should I? This is a book to ponder, to discuss in person, perhaps to reread; not one to pontificate about. I‘m not sure it'll work for everyone, but if you've ever felt the lonely isolation of not fitting in; if you've ever struggled—whether or not you're an actual immigrant, whatever color your skin—to assimilate, and other times worked just as hard to defend who you are; if you've ever striven toward a better life, if it hasn't quite worked out; you might appreciate this book.