In the end, I decided to let go of my greed and to plant the seed of book fetishism in my child instead, and there we go: she now proudly displays her first Jamaica Kincaid novel on her bookshelf, and it has her very own name written inside the cover, with best wishes from the author. Lining up with other readers to get my copies of her books signed, I was torn between greed and love for my daughter, deliberating inside my head whether this new copy of Annie John, bought for my 13-year-old (I have my own, read copy at home), should really be hers, or whether I should keep the signed copy and give her the old one, thus outing myself as a true book fetishist at last. I had the privilege to briefly exchange a few words with Jamaica Kincaid after a session she attended at a book fair last weekend. "For I could not be sure," she reflects, "whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world." At the end of her school years, Annie decides to leave Antigua and her family, but not without a measure of sorrow, especially for the mother she once knew and never ceases to mourn. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world at school she instinctively rebels against authority and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a "young lady," ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, "It was in such a paradise that I lived." When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's benign shadow.
She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl's existence. A classic coming-of-age story in the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Kincaid's novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood.Īn adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. Annie John is a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua.
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