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A review by erinlcrane
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
3.0
I struggled with this, but not for the same reason as other readers it seems. I didn’t find Annie that unlikable. I found a lot of her thoughts and behaviors to be pretty age appropriate? She was figuring out her own identity vs her parents and peers, and that often meant she had negative thoughts about them and thought she was better than them.
What I didn’t like about this book was hard for me to figure out. The voice was strange. Written in the past tense and sometimes reflective as if narrating this from an older age, but still felt child-like. And I don’t like narration from a child voice. I listened to the audiobook and I decided that I often felt like a children’s book was being narrated to me. Felt like it was written for a younger audience in much of the sentence structure, word choice, repetition, and emotional maturity described. And that was driving me crazy. My experience of reading this book is really more of a 2 star, but the themes and the writing really warranted a bump up to 3 stars.
What I didn’t like about this book was hard for me to figure out. The voice was strange. Written in the past tense and sometimes reflective as if narrating this from an older age, but still felt child-like. And I don’t like narration from a child voice. I listened to the audiobook and I decided that I often felt like a children’s book was being narrated to me. Felt like it was written for a younger audience in much of the sentence structure, word choice, repetition, and emotional maturity described. And that was driving me crazy. My experience of reading this book is really more of a 2 star, but the themes and the writing really warranted a bump up to 3 stars.