It is the child's view of change as betrayal, and it is her mother who becomes the focus ofĪt age 10, Annie John is fascinated by figures she sees in the distance passing through the cemetery near their house. She doesn't want things to change but she has no choice her mother's once protective hand is pushing her out the door. Her whole life is contained in that trunk, and that's just the trouble. Life - her little embroidered chemise when she was born, diapers, baby bottles, first shoes, right up to her most recent certificates of merit from school. The trunk now contains carefully preserved items from the young girl's The awful truth is that it appears to be an inevitable and unavoidable result of growing up, and I can't remember reading a book that illustrates this more poignantly than ''Annie John.'' To grow up is to grow beyond, to outgrow.Īs a child, one of her favorite pastimes is to watch her mother, also named Annie John, go through the trunk she brought with her when she left home at 16. But what has caused this rejection of everything and everyone she has grown up with? The time your mother was carrying you,' '' - she fervently hopes for good. At the end we findĪnnie John bound for England - ''away from my home, away from my mother, away from my father, away from the everlasting blue sky, away from the everlasting hot sun, away from people who said to me, 'This happened during But like most paradises, there is a snake in it, and like most paradises, it does not last. My father,Īn only child, she is doted on by her parents, given the best education available and made much of by those who know her - paradise indeed. ''How terrible it must be for all the people who had no one to love them so, and no one whom they loved so, I thought.
Not only that, she has her mother almost to herself. The weather is nice and the living is easy. ''It was in such a paradise that I lived,'' Annie John says of her early childhood after all, this is Antigua, This slender novel of interrelated stories (all of which appeared in The New Yorker). JAMAICA KINCAID, the author of the much praised story collection ''At the Bottom of the River,'' has packed a lot of valuable insight about the complex relationship between mothers and daughters into Her latest novel is ''In Another Country.''ġ48 pp.
Section 7, Column 1 Book Review Deskīy Susan Kenney Susan Kenney teaches English at Colby College in Maine.
The New York Times: Book Review Search ArticleĪpril 7, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
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