At the Bottom of the River Audiobook By Jamaica Kincaid cover art

At the Bottom of the River

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At the Bottom of the River

By: Jamaica Kincaid
Narrated by: Robin Miles
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About this listen

This is a collection of Jamaica Kincaid's earliest published writings: her inspired, lyrical short stories.

These stories plunge the listener gently into another way of perceiving both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her narrative is, by turns, naïvely whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partially remembered, partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbean - family, manners, and landscape - as distilled and transformed by Kincaid's special style and vision.

Kincaid leads us to consider, as if for the first time, the powerful ties between mother and child, the beauty and destructiveness of nature, the gulf between the masculine and the feminine, the significance of such familiar things as a house, a cup, a pen. Transfiguring our human form and our surroundings - shedding skin, darkening an afternoon, painting a perfect place - these stories tell us something we didn't know, in a way we hadn't expected.

©2000 Jamaica Kincaid (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Fiction Literary Fiction Short Stories
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Lovely Prose

Jamaica Kincaid is a writer that I hold in high regard. Like Kincaid, I am also from the Caribbean, so I find the setting, the cultural references and context familiar and relatable. The language is vivid, descriptive and beautifully rendered. Many of the stories examine the complexities of the mother daughter dynamic.

However, after a while I had to force myself to maintain interest. For me the stories are too similar in theme and style, with not much variation in the storyline. Because of that, it started to get monotonous after a while.

Good thing it is a short listen, as I almost did not finish the audiobook. The quality of the narration is excellent. That’s why I felt encouraged to continue until the end.

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Sound was missing on several stories

Half of the stories had no audio. I don't know if this is a technical glitch or if the narrator got tired, but I felt as if I wasted my credit on this audio book.

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glitch in audio

There is a glitch in the second story in the audio, where I am currently reading in the book. Please fix ASAP.

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