Adored this short novel. The author does a wonderful job jumping through the timeline and each snippet of the past is so intense and well-delivered but never too long or tiresome. Bring me more novels set in Scarborough!

I have been doing David Chariandy’s Brother an immense disservice when I refer to it as a novel. There is a lyricism, a volume, a pulsating rhythm through every word Chariandy writes: Brother is more song than novel.

(Originally published on inthemargins.ca)

The first time I read Brother, three words jumped out at me: violence, viscerality, and volume.

The violence in the story is both evident—in the beatings, the shootings, the jars of pickles breaking against the wall—and subtle: violence is hidden in the way the Michael and Francis perceive the world, in the way the world sees them. No one is ever calm, or at ease; living on the edge is trauma in itself.

Chariandy’s words, his lyrics of this song, are more than just sonorous; they are palpable. We feel each gaze upon the boys as if someone was gazing upon us, and we feel the knife blade in our own hands as Francis grabs it to protect his brother. Every setting, every circumstance is visceral. From the start, I felt dampness as if I had been sprayed by slush just minutes before.

Dionne Brand describes Brother as “timbrous.” Marlon James says it is “pulsing with rhythm, beating with life.” The words are sonorous, but they are also loud. Chariandy infuses the entire story with music, but every word has volume: the sirens of the police cars, the ruffles of pages of books at the public library.

* * *

The second time I read Brother, I felt in it a story of grief. The book is an elegy to a lost brother, but it is about so much more loss. It is about the loss of innocence, about the loss of comfort, about the loss of community. It is a story of grief, of coming to terms that the world does not always cooperate and that we often lose what we had hoped and envisioned and must just take what we are given. We grieve those hopes and visions, we grieve the loss of lives we could have had. It is about complicated grief, but also a traumatic grief: it is not just a grief based on loss that lingers, but a grief that is reinforced every day by the trauma we face because of who we are.

The third time I read Brother, I felt in it a story of manhood. The story is filled with performative masculinity—most poignantly when Anton, after being beaten, turns his crying into laughter—and with the complicated dance of knowing what it is to be a man. Is masculinity performed, or felt? Is it seen, or perceived? What does it mean to be a man when nobody ever taught you how? What does it mean to be a man when you don’t know from whom to learn?

The fourth time I read Brother, I sang each word.

Chariandy’s tale of growing up in Scarborough is song as memory. It is a lyrical, melodious, melancholic reverie passing through time to evoke memory through stories.

Memory is “the muscle sting of now.” Brother is that sonorous hum through those muscles. And so, I sing. Volume!, I say.

* * *

(Originally published on inthemargins.ca)

(I will be hosting a chat with David Chariandy at the Wolf Performance Hall on Monday, April 16, 2018 at 7pm as part of the One Book One London initiative. In our chat, we’ll be discussing some of the things I wrote about above; if you’re in London and have a free evening, please do come out and join us.)

David Chariandy's narrative of racial discrimination, poverty, and the immigrant experience was so powerful and visceral, I actually had to put it down for a bit toward the end of the novel. I'm glad that I picked it back up, despite knowing that the toughest chapters were yet to come. This is one of those books that should be required reading for all citizens to promote empathy and understanding in the face of divisive political rhetoric.

4 Stars.

I read this all in one go. It's at once familiar - set in Scarborough, in a world I can picture so well - but also unfamiliar, relaying the immigrant experience for a Trinidadian family who relocates to Canada and the struggles they endure there, largely related to deeply institutionalized racism and ghettoization.

It's told in shifts back and forth in time, and I think that took some of the emotional impact away, and that, combined with some of the queer representation, took away that final star for me.

I really liked this, and it shook me too. I think it was a great length, and it is a story I'll absolutely remember.

A heartbreaking story about family, prejudice, violence, and community. The writing was understated, yet poignant and the discussions of the immigrant plight and issues of masculinity were important and impactful. You grow to care so much for these two brothers and that makes the book all the more tragic

4.5 stars rounded down.

For about 30 years I lived south of the neighbourhood described in this book, but in a very different, middle-class, largely white environment. I saw people from this area every day at the Kennedy subway station or on the Morningside bus. Not so much when I commuted on the GO Train.

It is fascinating to get a real insight into the lives of so many people who live in Scarborough and similar locations. The people who survive on low-paying, insecure jobs are forced into tough lives on the margins of our society.

One thing I found odd was the constant references to the Rouge valley. The Rouge River is several kilometres further east of where this book is set. If the characters were going into the river valley beside their homes, which they no doubt were, they went down to Highland Creek. I checked Google Maps a couple times while reading the book to make sure I wasn't confused. I wasn't.