Set in a housing project near Toronto, David Chariandy's Brother explores the lasting damage of racism and police brutality on a young brown boy, his family and his entire neighborhood. The story unfolds in two parts: Michael of the present, narrating the state of grief and despair in which he lives with his mother as an adult, and Michael of the past, a young boy who idolizes his brother. "Francis was my older brother. His was a name a toughened kid might boast of knowing, or a name a parent might pronounce in warning. But before all of this, he was the shoulder pressed against me bare and warm, that body always just a skin away." As Brother moves fluidly between past and present, the year of Francis's death comes into focus: an exceptionally hot summer in a neighborhood of immigrants and their bored, overheated children; a shooting in the neighborhood to which too many kids bear witness; the increased police presence in the area after it.
Chariandy (Soucouyant) packs a slim novel with an incredible amount of weight. Here are young boys hoping for a future--a specific one centered on music and the promise of hip-hop, but also a general one, the right simply to grow into adulthood. Here is a family wracked with grief, stuck in a neighborhood crowded with memories and still imbued with the prejudices that took Francis's life. Here are promises broken and dreams denied. And in the middle, perfectly captured by Chariandy's sparse and moving prose, one boy trying to make sense of it all. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm