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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, Murder
Moderate: Blood
Harrowing and heartfelt. I felt like a fly on the wall during this family's heartbreak. An important read.
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
This short yet intense novel depicts the lives of Francis and his younger brother Michael, growing up in a run-down neighborhood of Toronto with their Trinidadian mother, Ruth. Alternating between present day and early 1980s Scarborough, the compelling storytelling by reserved and caring narrator Michael leads to one summer night when police brutality escalates to the irrevocable. In this moving, powerful bildungsroman of tenderness, love, loss, and, as one character defines as "complicated grief", David Chariandy subtly and timely describes the consequences of white prejudices and institutional racism against non-white, immigrants communities, which echoes social movements such as Black Lives Matter. Indeed, this urgent novel matters, too.
An impressively paced and well thought out book on grief and what it does to families. Loved the Canadian location of Scarborough and the prose that the author writes in. A quick read but powerful.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I received this book as a giveaway through Good Reads.
I had read David Chariandy's first novel, Soucouyant, and thought it was tremendous. This book is equally good. It deals with two brothers growing up in a tough neighborhood in Scarborough, their single mother who tries to provide for them and as a result, has to leave them unattended for long periods of time, and the aftermath when things go wrong.
I don't really know what to say about this novel. Chariandy has a gift for putting more into a short novel than other writers can into hundreds of pages. No word is wasted, the characters feel real, no pat answers are provided, the story is compelling.
I'm always better at dissecting books that I don't like than those I do, so I will just say that this is an excellent book, as good as his first, and I wrote a much better review of that one then I'm doing here. So go read that review, and then read both books because they are both exceptional.
I had read David Chariandy's first novel, Soucouyant, and thought it was tremendous. This book is equally good. It deals with two brothers growing up in a tough neighborhood in Scarborough, their single mother who tries to provide for them and as a result, has to leave them unattended for long periods of time, and the aftermath when things go wrong.
I don't really know what to say about this novel. Chariandy has a gift for putting more into a short novel than other writers can into hundreds of pages. No word is wasted, the characters feel real, no pat answers are provided, the story is compelling.
I'm always better at dissecting books that I don't like than those I do, so I will just say that this is an excellent book, as good as his first, and I wrote a much better review of that one then I'm doing here. So go read that review, and then read both books because they are both exceptional.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Blood, Police brutality, Grief
Moderate: Bullying, Cancer, Gun violence, Sexual content, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In his second novel, Brother, David Chariandy elegiacally narrates a succinct tale of migration, hope, race, community, motherly love and sibling relationship. In less than 200 pages he examines the life of a migrant family whose mother and absent father from Trinidad and their sons Michael and Francis are struggling under the weight of their mother’s sacrifice and the hope that the children will redeem the past and dreams of their mother like those of the other migrant parents in the Scarborough estate where they live. These migrant parents had big dreams that they have now outlived but what keeps them going is that their children will not end up like them.
Brother is told through the eyes of Michael, the younger of Ruth’s two sons. Michael is a young lad that attracts the empathy of the reader. He is a fragile kid that is not readily built for the rough life of the housing project where they live. The prejudice that the police exhibit in policing the neighbourhood makes him even more fragile, leaving him scared and unsure of his place in society. His elder brother Francis is more aligned with the streets. In a fatherless household, one where the mother is mostly absent as she tries to do countless jobs and shifts in a bid to earn enough to barely feed them, Francis becomes a victim of his environment – an environment that is built to exploit and destroy him and people like him. Soon after, tragedy strikes and Michael has to assume a leadership role in the family despite being barely a teenager. The prejudice against his skin colour and means that in addition to the poverty around him, the cards are heavily stacked against him.
Brother is structured interestingly – one step in the present and the next step is in a decade past. The past is centred on Michael and Francis’ childhood and the period around which police brutality reshaped an already impoverished neighbourhood. David Chariandy’s prose is clean if a little too colourful for my liking. There is a brutal honesty about his depiction of migrant life and police prejudice in black communities that are found in his use of language. The structural issues that shape the daily living of the inhabitants of Scarborough are palpable in the pages and brought to light in the prose. Brother is an impressive story that reminds us of the odds that some have to deal with on account of their skin colour and being born or raised in the ”wrong” part of town.