Title: Brother
Author: David Chariandy
Date Read: April 19, 2019
One and a half snaps.
Because life got busy, and I didn’t sit to write a reflection on this novel as soon as I should have, perhaps it isn’t getting the best review either. This is a second novel for David Chariandy, and was featured in this years’ selections for CBC’s Canada Reads.
A touching story of a family living in Scarborough in the 1990s. The teens; Michael and Vincent, face prejudice as brown boys in The Park. Vincent is shy, sensitive and over-protective of his mother; while Michael is hardened and resolved. Their over-worked mother does her best to scrape enough together to care for her teenage boys.
It is beautifully written prose and illuminates the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as immigrants.
A tragic shooting changes all of their lives irrevocably and packs the real emotional punch of the novel.