(good)

So silly, lovely, and provocative, often all in the same sentence. She captures the idiosyncrasies of gardening, colonialism, travel and control with really unassuming grace...i loved it.

“In early September I picked and cut open a small, soft, yellow-fleshed watermelon, and I was suddenly reminded of the pictures of small girls I used to see in a magazine for girls when I was a small girl myself: they were always at a birthday party, and the colors of their hair and of the clothes they wore and of the light in the room were all some variation of this shade, the golden shade of the watermelon that I had grown. I would wish then to be a girl like that, with hair like that, in a room like that—and the despair I felt then that such a thing would never be true is replaced now with the satisfaction that such a thing would never be true. Those were the most delicious melons I have ever grown.”

This is such a beautiful book. I first got wind of Kincaid in one of the introductory chapters of a book on ecocriticism, where she was introduced as “The New Yorker’s first anti-colonial gardener” or something to that effect.

Kincaid’s prose is so beautiful and flows so well, this book melding personal history and gardening together seamlessly. It meanders, leisurely and winding like a river. Will definitely read more or her narrative fictions.

Note: I started reading it more than six months ago, and I am leaving it DNF in spite of my massive enjoyment of it as an acknowledgement that the moment has now passed.

Dnf. Jag klarar inte av sättet boken är skriven på. Har författaren något emot punkter? Älskar hon parenteser och kommatecken mer än något annat? Läsupplevelsen påminner om att lyssna på en bitter och negativ person som pratar i snabbt tempo och halvvägs in i meningen glömmer bort vad hon pratar om och byter ämne.

Ett exempel:

”Det finns fortfarande människor kvar i livet som minns när huset byggdes av Robert Woodworth själv, utan hjälp av hans tre barn, tre pojkar då, mycket vuxna män nu, till exempel; en man som säljer fastigheter minns hur han som liten följde med Robert Woodworth till stan och lånade en grävmaskin för att göra hålet i marken som blev grunden.”



Jag klarar inte mer. Livet är för kort.

I read this book on the recommendation of Ross Gay in his Book of Delights and I'm glad I did. It's the first book I've read by Jamaica Kincaid and I enjoyed her voice and her reflections on gardening and much more. I especially enjoyed reading her thoughts on traveling in China to look for plants, and on the gardener's of experience being a "seeker"--whether seeking to regrow some plant of memory from the past or from the imagined future. I also enjoyed Kincaid's reflections on living and gardening in Vermont after having started her life in Antigua with its different plants and cultural milieu. Finally, I could really identify with her saying her children felt that her garden came between them and her full attention. Boy can I identify with that.