About the book (from the publisher):

An intensely beautiful, searingly powerful, tightly constructed novel, Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991. 
     With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home. 
     Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry — teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves. 
     Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, dreams of a future in music. Michael’s dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
     With devastating emotional force David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.

A bit of a back story:

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending Penguin Random House Canada’s Fall Preview.  During the event, Christina Vecchiato,  a sales rep for PRHC,  firmly declared David Chariandy’s Brother would win the 2017 Giller Prize. The sentiment was seconded by PRHC’s district sales manager Justin Sorbara-Hosker. At this point, I was kicking myself a little bit. I am fortunate to receive review copies of books from PRHC regularly. Of course, there are limits to their generosity each month and when the opportunity presented itself, I opted for a different book instead of Chariandy’s. (So many books…. so little time!)  During a break in the Fall Preview, I chatted with Christina and Justin and expressed my intention to buy Brother the next day. I was already interested in the novel, but thanks to their strong endorsements buying the book became  urgent.  Justin handed me his copy. “Take it!” he said.   Thank you, Justin. Thank. You!

This week, Brother was longlisted for the 2017 Giller Prize, and shortlisted for the 2017 Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Yesterday, I read this incredible novel, and cannot stop thinking about the perfect beauty of David Chariandy’s writing.

Brother is a timely and necessary story. In a recent Globe and Mail review, Chariandy noted

[he] rarely, if ever, encountered a world resembling his own: the apartment buildings and strip malls, the busy streets and hidden valleys, the sights and smells and tongues that he saw and heard and experienced every day in Scarborough. “There was a very powerful sense that it was not worthy of representation – none of my life. My parents were not worthy of representation. My experiences were not worthy of representation. My neighbourhood – this whole borough – was not worthy, except in bloody newspaper headlines.” He continues: “To read a novel, or anything, set in Scarborough – and affirming that there is life in this part of the city – I think that would have been transformative.”

Chariandy has given readers such a gift in offering this view of a community and a family that may, in day-to-day life, be overlooked or judged unfairly thanks to prejudice and stereotyping. The novel shows what life is like for young black men coming up in a world where police harassment and violence are the norm, where they are approached suspiciously and cautiously, or constantly underestimated.  How do people in such situations survive and thrive when so much is stacked against them? Can there be any hope for a decent future?  In NOW Magazine, Chariandy says:

 

“… the point of the novel is really about finding life and creativity in the midst of that violence, and after that violence.”

This is a novel for every reader, and it deals beautifully with themes and subjects of such importance. Anchoring it all is Chariandy’s exquisite writing. For me, this has been a standout read for 2017. I hope you will find your way to this novel, and that you will love it as much as I do.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Happy reading!