"Annie John" by Jamaica Kincaid
“My body ached a little at all this false going back and forth….”
- Jamaica Kincaid in Annie John
The line acts as a perfect pin on what I love about everything I’ve found and keep finding to love in Kincaid.
With a voice that feels incapable of lying, her language is only inventive, thrilling as it is sharp in gutting dishonesties large and small, from the subtle but adverse lies of accepted social habits, the gray and transitory nature of growing up and choosing who we are, to the outright tragedy of colonization by foreign powers.
In Annie John, Kincaid’s first novel is set in her homeland of Antigua (subject to British rule since the early 1800s), mirroring much of the author’s own experience in the same place and time frame of the mid-20th century.
The young, titular narrator moves from first memories to young adulthood, wrestling and sharpening herself on the frictions that come with this stage of a life through an artistry mixing surrealism and deadpan reportage, attention never veering from detail as Annie’s journey tumbles and vaults across all manner conflicts.
In technique and ingenuity, each page compels and draws awe. Garden-variety boredom to chafing at social norms are opportunities for exploration and expansion with Kincaid, with Annie being a pure pleasure of a protagonist to ride with, holding nothing back when she acts in ways at turns brave and unfortunate, loving and exploitative, and even downright mean at times.
One is never any one thing, and in speaking this truth, Annie is a narrator who earns trust as a person ready to expose every side of herself.
Complexity has to accepted if understanding is the goal, and Annie is inspiring in her approach to self-belief and confidence without half steps, while also being manipulative to others in times we wouldn’t do well to mirror but, if we’re honest (we do well when we are), certainly can.
As in At the Bottom of the River and The Autobiography of My Mother, the voice I encountered in Annie dives all the way in with the demons, paradoxes, and opportunities found in any life, confronting them all with the bravery one has to utilize if one is to grow one’s genuine self, and, therefore, genuinely grow.
Along these lines, Annie as character and Kincaid as artist chop the legs out from under bad habits and relationships that serve neither one, scaling uncommon heights reserved for the brave few who aren’t interested in well-trodden or safe zones.
As in the case of the narrator, these choices move Annie to a new stage, well-prepared and hungry for more growth.
With Kincaid, we see an artist turning in writing that puts her among the best I’ve come across, and even more remarkably so in a first novel, marking an early and high-flying highlight that seizes on the genre with work displaying what sets the greats above good.