The Autobiography of My Mother (Jamaica Kincaid on Audio)

Rating:
Summary: Puzzling
Review: After all the hype, and comparison to Camus' "The Stranger", I suppose my expectations were high for this book. I found "Autobiography of my Mother" completely benign. In some parts, pointless. Unlike Camus' protagonist in "The Stranger", Xuela's world-view is too fully revealed to be cleverly wrought and too self-perpetuating to cause empathy with the reader. A self-pitying character, Xuela is hard to empathize with because she decries her father and the white "conquerers" for exploiting people and destroying the aboriginal population's culture; yet, Xuela also takes advantage of many -- emotionally and psychologically. Therefore, Xuela just comes across as bitter and codependent and the reader is not compelled to sympathize with her situation. I also found nothing sensual about the book -- the author's placement of masturbation description seemed to come out of nowhere and appears simply awkward. Overally, the book does not deliver compared to the hype

Rating:
Summary: Zowie! Kincaid sucks readers in again
Review: Autobiography of My Mother is a powerful, mesmerizing, and other-worldy tale of Xuela, a woman of Dominica, West Indies, who is a worthy subject for Kincaid's musical cadences and rapturous prose. Boy, can this woman write - and she infuses all her prose with the lilting voices of her compatriots. There's no way to read her work aloud without finding yourself lapsing into the patois, sing-songy style of speech that comes thru so clearly in her writing. This book is a painful tale, the recounting of a difficult life without much love shown to the girl as she grows from motherless infant to strong and bitter young woman who aborts her pregnancy and remains defiant the rest of her life. Raised motherless herself, she determines never to mother others. Taken on a metaphorical level, the woman's story could be the story of Dominica, torn by suffering, racism, power, and the unbreakable bonds that bind them together.
Powerful writing on so, so many levels.

Rating:
Summary: Do I have to give it a star?
Review: Even that single star is more than this book is worth. My Engligh professor assigned this book to me during my sophomore year of college (along with Nectar in a Sieve, a far better, though not terrific book), and what little I remember of it was that it was just awful (and offal). Her writing is repetitive and choppy, perhaps descriptive but disgustingly so. Do we really need to know the "wetness between [her] legs", or that she cooked her menstrual fluid into some poor soul's dinner? I couldn't stand the book. If you want quality, read something by Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King (his descriptions of a girl coming of age in Carrie are much better than this book). Drop the book, throw it, burn it, whatever. It's just not worth reading. How many trees did we lose to its production (and, more importantly, how many talented young writers were rejected because this woman was published). It's just a book not worth reading about a story not worth telling.

Rating:
Summary: Controversial, disturbing, not for everyone.
Review: Having read this title while vacationing in Jamaica, (even though placed in Dominica and the author grew up in Atigua)I was entirely able to understand Xuela. Many children are born out of wedlock, though the fathers still are involved with their children. Xuela is an extreme, but not implausible, case of emotional detachment. Everything in the book, from her father's corruption, to encountering the stevedore during a downpour came to life in my reading experience. Be forewarned, Xuela is not a likeable character, and her physical self-love may be offensive to some readers. But Jamaica Kincaid's blunt and honest portrayal of a hardened woman is undeniably hard to forget.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking and overwhelming.......
Review: I did not like this book at first. I found it overwhelming and disturbing, but then I realized that I could not put it down. It touches son a subject that it not often talked about in the open. How a child feels after the loss of a parent and the abandonment of another. This book was well written and did exactly what is was supposed to do, making me think and feel for the character. This is not a book for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking and overwhelming.......
Review: I did not like this book at first. I found it overwhelming and disturbing, but then I realized that I could not put it down. It touches son a subject that it not often talked about in the open. How a child feels after the loss of a parent and the abandonment of another. This book was well written and did exactly what is was supposed to do, making me think and feel for the character. This is not a book for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Wish it had been longer
Review: I enjoyed this book very much and I especially liked that the subject matter of the book was unique and unusual.
The main character is not likeable, but yet the reader is drawn into her story and although she is quite wooden, you can feel her pain.
My only criticism of the book is that it would have been better if it had been longer. I would have like to have known more about the characters.
The writing is gorgeous and rich and it is very sensual. I think this is a very good book and I recommend it. It is not a typical read. It is unusual and unnerving in some parts, but I believe it is a true, honest and real portrayl of a woman very emotionally damaged.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I had hoped to read a colorful story about life in the Caribbean, and was not expecting the story to be happy and uplifting. However, I was disappointed to discover that the most prevalent topics in the book were the character's bodily smells, excretions, and sex life. I was left wondering what these aspects of the book had to do with the character's mother.

Rating:
Summary: I loved this book
Review: I have to speak up, because I feel that this book is being unfairly trashed. I stumbled across one of the chapters of this book in a collection, and I was so taken aback that I had to rush out and get the complete novel. I think that that Jamaica Kincaid's writing is so beautiful and poetic that she could be writing about anything and I would read it. But she also tells a very interesting and important story. Xuela is a mixed-race, motherless girl who does not receive love from anyone, and must survive by loving and celebrating her self. Perhaps for those people who have always felt secure in their place in life, and surrounded by love on all sides, Kincaid's book is too harsh and hard to relate to. But for those of us who have had times we when we felt so alone that we literally had to become our own mother and/or our own best friend, Kincaid's novel is a testimony to our experience. A great book.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, Poetic, Distinctive Writing
Review: I loved this book. This is the first Kincaid novel that I've read and I really dig the author's repetitive style of writing. I could definitely identify with the main theme of the book, having lost my own mother as a teenager. You go through life looking for that type of love, always coming up short because nothing comprable exists to the love of a mother who truly loves her children.You blindly search for womanhood, without the guidance from what could have been your most instrumental teacher. I would absolutely recommend this work to any young woman who has lost her mother, through death or otherwise. I cannot wait to get started on my next Kincaid novel.