At the Bottom of the River (Magill’s Choice: American Ethnic Writers)
At a glance:
- Author: Jamaica Kincaid
- First Published: 1982
- Genres: Short fiction, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: Girls, Maturation or coming of age, Self-discovery, Mothers, Parents and children, Philosophy or philosophers, Caribbean, Magic or magicians, Blacks, Gender roles, Immortality, Nature, Psychology or psychologists, Self, Supernatural, Superstition, Surrealism
- Locales: Antigua, West Indies
The Work
Some critics call At the Bottom of the River a novel; others call it a collection of stories. Certainly the stories’ interconnections lend a sense of continuity to this thin volume. Much of At the Bottom of the River is a recollection of Jamaica Kincaid’s childhood on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The author captures the identity of this region and its people with remarkable accuracy in her sketches. By telling her stories largely from a child’s point of view, Kincaid gracefully intermixes the outside world with her protagonist’s mental world...
[The entire page is 950 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
See Also
