However, with continual scenes of the Michael, Francis, and their mother getting eye-fucked by white people for having the nerve to set foot in a public place and the cops popping up at any given opportunity to harass the boys and their friends and illegally search them, I felt like it was laid on too thick. I understood thematically what he author was getting at, and I thought he effectively conveyed the way the characters felt branded from birth and were perceived a certain way from a very early age. One of the major things that kept me feeling distanced from the story was that for me, the portrayal of racism seemed overbearing. I can say that I haven’t read many (if any) books with gay black men as major characters, so this novel gets points for representation. It might have partially been because I knew Francis was going to die from early on, but when it finally happened I felt it lacked impact. However, I didn’t feel myself becoming connected to the plot or any of the characters. Michael works a crappy job at a grocery store and cares for his mother, who hasn’t been quite right mentally since her older son’s death, but when a young woman who Michael was close to growing up returns to their old neighborhood in the wake of her father’s death, it reawakens some old memories that Michael is ill-equipped to deal with.įirst of all, I thought Brother was very well-written the prose is very straightforward and free of frills or any self-inflated sense of pretension, but it had a certain eloquence that really stood out.

The novel is narrated by Michael as an adult, and we know early on that Francis is dead, although we don’t find out what actually happened until the end of the book. Francis seeks to make his escape by immersing himself in the music industry, and he becomes tight with an aspiring DJ named Jelly who ends up being his gay lover.

Francis has always looked out for his younger brother Michael, but as two underprivileged youths living in a district that’s reputed to produce nothing but hoodlums, opportunities are extremely hard to come by.

Brother david chariandy review