Annie John: A Novel (Paperback)

by Jamaica Kincaid (Author) "For a short while during the year I was ten, I thought only people I did not know died..." (more)
Key Phrases: green figs, Red Girl, Miss Nelson, Miss Edward (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Jamaica Kincaid beautifully delineates hatred and fear, because she knows they are often a step away from love and obsession. At the start of Annie John, her 10-year-old heroine is engulfed in family happiness and safety. Though Annie loves her father, she is all eyes for her mother. When she is almost 12, however, the idyll ends and she falls into deep disfavor. This inexplicable loss mars both lives, as each grows adept at public falsity and silent betrayal. The pattern is set, and extended: "And now I started a new series of betrayals of people and things I would have sworn only minutes before to die for." In front of Annie's father and the world, "We were politeness and kindness and love and laughter." Alone they are linked in loathing. Annie tries to imagine herself as someone in a book--an orphan or a girl with a wicked stepmother. The trouble is, she finds, those characters' lives always end happily. Luckily for us, though not perhaps for her alter ego, Kincaid is too truthful a writer to provide such a finale.

Review
"So touching and familiar it could be happening to any of us . . . and that's exactly the book's strength, its wisdom, its truth."--The New York Times Book Review

"So neon-bright that the traditional story of a young girl's passage into adolescence takes on a shimmering strangeness."--Elaine Kendall, The Los Angeles Times
-- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374525102
• ISBN-13: 978-0374525101
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #127,610 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars well done, October 22, 2000

A Kid's Review

Annie John was a well written book, about a young girl who after being sheltered by her parents, suddenly becomes somewhat disconnected from them. It seems that as she enters puberty her relationship with her mother deteriorates. I believe that this is the fault of the mother who did things with her daughter that made her too attached, for example they often took baths together. When Annie's mother realises that she is becoming a woman she begins to treat her different and Annie feels as though she is alone in her own world without the love that she feared losing throughout her childhood. This causes her to develop a deep hatred for her mother whom she once loved so much. I cannot say that I relate to Annie however Jamaica Kincaid does such a wonderful job getting you actually feel the pain and happiness encountered ny the character.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars maybe only adults can bear to look back, July 3, 1998

By	Jan Priddy (Arch Cape, OR USA) - See all my reviews

Annie John is about a daughter in the throes of conflict with her mother. She is finding out about mortality and sexuality and that her mother regards her as rival for her father's attention.

When a group of high school students read this book in my class eight years ago, the boys in the back row all whined about reading "girl stuff." Presumedly they're older now and would have some interest in the struggles of their mothers, daughters, sisters, and lovers... not to mention themselves. After all, don't we all go through a period of gaining vision and resenting it simultaneously?

I was caught with the opening scene, Annie John sees people dressed in black and some in white bobbing in the distance. What is it? she asks her mother, who tells her it must be the funeral of a child since such burials are always held in the morning. "Until then, I had not known that children could die."

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A novel of adolescent alienation and familial separation., March 28, 2002

By	David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Annie John tells the tale of a family's disintegration. Told from the perspective of Annie, 10 when the novel starts and in young adulthood by its end, the story revolves around Annie's transformation from an adoring, obedient child to rebellious, hardheaded outcast within her own home. It's a classic mother-daughter love-hate tale where balance is somehow lost and animosity and divisiveness come to rule the day.

The story is rendered in a series of 8 chapters that effectively amount to a sequence of interrelated short stories each of which highlights and incident and/or event that stands as a critical turning point in the mother-daughter relationship.

The story is set in Antigua. This, along with the prosaic quality of Annie's narrative voice, add an element of the exotic to the story. It also provides the basis for the inflexible social structure that locks the combatants into rigid stances from which, ultimately, they cannot extricate themselves.

The book is well written and progresses in a stately and unrushed manner. It's not the sort of book you pick up and can't put down. In point of fact, I found I tended to put it down after every chapter-the short story effect lent itself to such a reading style and, as each chapter amounts to a major point in the story, that gave me a chance to assimilate and assess the story tot hat point. I found the book intellectually stimulating but I can easily see how someone not really gripped by the story could call this work boring, as quite a few previous reviewers have.

On the whole I found it a unique and interesting reading experience that, in retrospect, ought to have been somewhat depressing, yet wasn't.

On the whole, an intriguing book.