Book Review: Brother by David Chariandy
Goodreads Description: With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home.
Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry -- teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves.
Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
My Review: "One morning, I peered with Francis into a newspaper box to read a headline about the latest terror and caught in the glass the reflection of our own faces."
Just picking up Brother and flipping through it to write this review, my heart sank into my stomach. It's one of those amazing books that leaves you speechless, but the senseless tragedy of what takes place guts me just thinking about it. It is honestly the first book in a long time to make me full on sob by the end. Not just a few tears, but a full on, heaving, sobbing mess. You have been warned. Prepare your heartstrings.
If this book could be summed up in a word, it would be grief. From it's opening pages, the feeling hangs oppressively between the characters as they dance around an unspoken hole in their lives. Brother tells the story of a police shooting that stole a brother and son, and left a family reeling with PTSD. Naturally, the book touches on some very heavy topics, but counters it with gentle, loving characters that unfortunately also amp up the tragedy of the loss.
Though told through Michael's point of view, the story focuses on his older brother, Francis, and the events that lead up to his death. Most of the book takes place in the past, contrasted with the 'present,' ten years after. Through this recollection, Chariandy exposes the systems that failed Francis long before his death: the school system that abandoned him, the systematic racism, cycles of poverty, toxic masculinity, etc. All of these build on one another until the night of his murder, when he's already too beaten down to play his part any longer. In this way, Chariandy makes the reader fully empathize with the experience of many people of colour in Canada who face these same systematic failures.
Chariandy's writing is also exceptionally beautiful. He takes time to highlight the beauty in a gritty, urban setting. He utilizes a lot of showing language that does not push 'politics,' but merely reflects the reality of the character's experience, such as the number of times the police drive past their house. There were so many lines, such as the one quoted above, that imparted so much weight through metaphor that they communicated much more than they seemed. Chariandy also manages to cram all of this into a measly 177 pages, while most other books I've seen on the topic need twice as many pages to cover half as many topics.
All in all, wow. Suffering through the tragedy is worth being witness to the poetry of this story. I'd highly recommend this book for anyone interested in an intense empathetic experience, or anyone seeking understanding on how the intersection of oppressions take root in a person's life.
TL;DR: 5/5 stars. A devastating tale of grief and healing.
