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See Now Then A Novel Jamaica Kincaid Books

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See Now Then A Novel Jamaica Kincaid Books

This novel of modest length by Jamaica Kincaid may be her most original and daring work to date. SEE NOW THEN illuminates the interior breakdown of a marriage by weaving together the quotidian demands of daily domestic life with the metaphorical dimension of mythical perception. Ms. Kincaid evokes the emotional brutality lurking behind the disintegration of a marriage as well as the inherent sense of cosiness that comes from creating and maintaining family life. The whole saga reveals itself before the backdrop of Time's ruthless and somehow flippantly random hold on us. The novel unfurls in a third person stream-of-consciousness reminiscent of Virginia Woolf while standing firmly in Kincaid's unique voice & perspective. There are times towards the end where the narrative seemed inscrutable to me, but on the whole, I found this work to being a striking and intriguing read. Ms.Kincaid's writing is alternately blunt, lyrical, poetic, quietly sardonic, jarring--and often stunning.


Tags : Amazon.com: See Now Then: A Novel (9780374180560): Jamaica Kincaid: Books,Jamaica Kincaid,See Now Then: A Novel,Farrar, Straus and Giroux,0374180563,Family Life,Psychological,Domestic fiction,Domestic fiction.,Families,Families;Fiction.,Marriage,Marriage;Fiction.,CARIBBEAN NOVEL AND SHORT STORY IN ENGLISH,FICTION Family Life General,FICTION Psychological,Family,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Literary,Fiction-Coming of Age,Fiction-Psychological,GENERAL,General Adult,KINCAID, JAMAICA - PROSE & CRITICISM,Literary,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),United States,Vermont,african american fiction; caribbean literature; contemporary novels; contemporary literature; family life; marriage; african american books; african american authors; african american fiction books; antigua; island book; african american literature; books by african american authors; african american writers; african american novels; books african american

See Now Then A Novel Jamaica Kincaid Books Reviews

It is so good to have Jamaica Kincaid's brilliant writing back on the page to
challenge us. I was completely taken in by this story of a family's disintegration, and the woman at the center of it, a writer with a room. I think the style, unbelievably difficult to pull off,succeeds in giving us an almost sensory experience of the raw relationships between husband and wife, children and parents, and indeed, time. Brava!
This was my first Kincaid book. I have heard many great things about her work. This particular work was not my cup of tea. While I do appreciate her efforts and talents it did not remain to be enough to win me over. You must have patiences to endure the repetition, characters, and themes. I found myself falling asleep at night trying to finish chapters 6 to the end. Persephone's story differed but the repetition begins again.
Whether this is autobiographical has been a debated subject but I really think the latter half of the book makes it quite clear that it is indeed it.
I do appreciate that even though you might feel lost at times while reading it. Kincaid does eventually after a time spell it out for the reader.
I did purchase the book so I could make notes and underline passages. However had I known of the author's political affiliation and some of her statements it would have made me do differently.
I loved reading Jamaica Kincaid's new book after ten year hiatus. I have read all her books. Often wondered where her life took her in such a long time.To admit how her husband hated her and was a philanderer, how she tried to hold her life together in the Shirley Jackson house. Was it self serving? yes. No matter she writes beautifully.
J.Lee
In "See Now Then", Jamaica Kincaid tells us "As a young woman she had been like a flower found in the deep jungles of the new Americas; a black Dahlia, a brown marigold, a sea-green Zenia; when she was a young woman, the world was not her oyster, did not harbor her like it's oyster, providing a sweet space in which she became a pearl. When she was a young woman, it was her fear of death that kept her alive".

This stunningly beautiful writing took my breath away. I did not know what I was getting into when I began to read this piece. I had read that it was "probably" an auto-biographic lament on the state of Jamaica Kincaid's marriage. The book is not a novel, it is a book length poem...a non linear stream of consciousness exercise that is both totally mesmerizing and exponentially frustrating.

Her writing literally dances off of the pages, enchanting the reader, while at the same time taunting them to dare to "stay with her". I cried along with "Mrs. Sweet"...her pain was palpable and so sad that I had to stop and put the book down several times...and yet, I can't, with a pure and unpretentious intention, totally recommend this book.

Jamaica Kincaid's message is really the one and only "message" that there is. Now is then, and then is now, because we are all only a compilation of all of our thens. So she presents her story without any chronology, because how could it possibly matter. Mrs. Sweet is held captive by the memories of her own mother and her difficult childhood. She is from a culture that could not possibly be more opposite than the one she is attempting to raise her family in. Her obnoxious husband has stopped loving her. She has been hurt as badly as if scalding water had been tossed in her face. Her children are clueless and mean. All great material. But while reading "See Then Now" I felt like I was running through a beautiful field with a butterfly net, trying to capture a few of the lovely creatures for myself...I would happily have two or three in my net for a minute or so (understanding the author's beautiful words) and then they would flutter out of my net (there was one section, late in the book, where I found myself deep in the weeds, not comprehending even a brief whif of the narrative for several pages) only to run like the wind and capture another elusive creature in my net again in a short while. At the end of my struggle, I decided that even if one multi- colored beauty was trapped at the bottom of my net when I was finished, it was so phenomenally spectacular that (although I was totally exhausted) my quest had been well worth it.
Although a great deal has been made of the "autobiographical" elements of this elegant and fearless book, it is a mistake to dismiss too quickly the author's own insistence that it not a roman a clef but "a book about time." As always with Ms. Kincaid's work, the prose is uncanny in its sinuous movement, *demonstrating* rather than asserting how our experience is an ever shifting liquid rope braided of what was, what is, and what will be. While it is true that even the most minor characters (usually retaining their actual names) have their counterparts in the real world, you do yourself a grave injustice if you read this book as an account of "what really happened" to those "real world" counterparts. Rather, using available light, Ms. Kincaid has furthered the project of authors like Virginia Woolf who seek to portray the disturbing simultaneity of all the events in one's life--a simultaneity which both convention and language are always conspiring to disguise.

This is a wonderful book. Leave the gossip where you found it, because gossip is everywhere, while true literary achievement is rare, rare, rare.
This novel of modest length by Jamaica Kincaid may be her most original and daring work to date. SEE NOW THEN illuminates the interior breakdown of a marriage by weaving together the quotidian demands of daily domestic life with the metaphorical dimension of mythical perception. Ms. Kincaid evokes the emotional brutality lurking behind the disintegration of a marriage as well as the inherent sense of cosiness that comes from creating and maintaining family life. The whole saga reveals itself before the backdrop of Time's ruthless and somehow flippantly random hold on us. The novel unfurls in a third person stream-of-consciousness reminiscent of Virginia Woolf while standing firmly in Kincaid's unique voice & perspective. There are times towards the end where the narrative seemed inscrutable to me, but on the whole, I found this work to being a striking and intriguing read. Ms.Kincaid's writing is alternately blunt, lyrical, poetic, quietly sardonic, jarring--and often stunning.