Jamaica Kincaid beautifully delineates hatred and fear, because she knows they are often a step away from love and obsession. At the start of Annie John, her 10-year-old heroine is engulfed in family happiness and safety. Though Annie loves her father, she is all eyes for her mother. When she is almost 12, however, the idyll ends and she falls into deep disfavor. This inexplicable loss mars both lives, as each grows adept at public falsity and silent betrayal. The pattern is set, and extended: “And now I started a new series of betrayals of people and things I would have sworn only minutes before to die for.” In front of Annie’s father and the world, “We were politeness and kindness and love and laughter.” Alone they are linked in loathing. Annie tries to imagine herself as someone in a book–an orphan or a girl with a wicked stepmother. The trouble is, she finds, those characters’ lives always end happily. Luckily for us, though not perhaps for her alter ego, Kincaid is too truthful a writer to provide such a finale.

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