![]() ![]() Michael relates the story of growing up in the shadow of his old brother Francis who is more socially adept and desirable. What's so beautiful about Chariandy's narrative is how he subtly captures the sense of a family who essentially loves and cares for each other, but whose status as West Indian immigrants has made them into perpetual outsiders and these internalized feelings make them unknown even to each other. They are both haunted by a sense of loss and penned in by their circumstances. Michael struggles to get enough shift work at his low-paid job and spends the bulk of his time caring for his mentally-precarious mother. He still sleeps in the bunk bed of his childhood, but now the top bunk is empty and gradually we discover what happened to his absent brother Francis over the course of the novel. ![]() ![]() ![]() Michael lives with his grieving and fragile mother in a tower block in Scarborough, a district of Toronto with a high immigrant population. It's difficult to capture the slow-burning sense of alienation that someone can feel within family life, but in “Brother” David Chariandy powerfully depicts the story of a working class mother and her two sons in a way that gives a fully rounded sense of this. ![]()
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