Brother, a novel by David Chariandy, follows the lives of Michael and Francis, two Trinidadian-Canadian boys navigating burgeoning relationships, their mother’s unstable health, and their place in the world even as their lives are touched by police and gang violence.
Framing grief as a fact of life, rather than an inherently good or bad thing, Brother interweaves wonderstruck flashbacks of a childhood in Scarborough, one of Toronto’s most multicultural districts, with the grounded reality of Michael’s twenties.
Brother is an urgent novel about the simultaneously destructive and healing route grief takes through Michael’s life, particularly focusing on the ways in which time warps around grief. After breaking the 10 years of silence between himself and his high school girlfriend Aisha, Michael reconnects with this figure from his past over over a chaotic weekend as Aisha revisits Scarborough after her father’s passing, a process which brings Michael’s childhood memories back to him with the kind of clarity that only hindsight provides. This visit, and the cause behind it, sends Michael down a path of desperate remembering — of his childhood, of the vivid hip-hop scene of the 90s, and of his older brother Francis.
The absence of Francis (who was Michael’s friend, confidant, and role model) in Michael’s present-day life is the looming mystery of this novel. Devastating and joyful, this book explores the particular kind of loneliness that comes from never having learned how to ask for help.
This novel hits the ground running. Snappy, funny, and deeply moving, Brother comes alive in its descriptions of Scarbrough, which are so stirring that Scarborough itself seems like its own character in this book. The vividness that Chariandy gives to the district is an aspect of the novel that I am excited to see adapted to film. I am honoured to suggest this book in April, because Western Arctic Moving Pictures is holding a free screening of this book’s film adaptation on Wednesday, April 19 at the Capitol Theatre from 7:30-9:30 p.m.
As well as being made available at the Yellowknife Public Library, the Book Cellar is offering 15 per cent off purchases of this book if you show your event ticket, and I’ll be hosting an informal book club for Chariandy’s novel in the theatre after the film. Beyond shining light on the ways that memories intersect with and shape our present realities, Brother is a moving story that stuck with me for years after I read it.