At the Bottom of the River

This collection is Jamaica Kincaids earliest published writings: her inspired, lyrical short stories. These stories plunge the listener gently into another way of perceiving both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her narrative is, by turns, navely whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partially remembered, partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbeanfamily, manners, and landscapeas distilled and transformed by Kincaids special style and vision. Kincaid leads us to consider, as if for the first time, the powerful ties between mother and child, the beauty and destructiveness of nature, the gulf between the masculine and the feminine, the significance of such familiar things as a house, a cup, a pen. Transfiguring our human form and our surroundingsshedding skin, darkening an afternoon, painting a perfect placethese stories tell us something we didnt know, in a way we hadnt expected.