CHAIANDY’S TIGHTLY CONSTRUCTED NOVEL IS AMONG THE YEAR’S BEST

It’s Ruth’s growing mistrust of her eldest son that leads her to think the worst when the boys run into trouble with the police. They’d done nothing wrong, though they were witnesses to a shooting; but to a mother wrapped up in her pride, her two boys escorted home by the police, in full sight of all their neighbours, is too much. Her reaction leads to a brief fight; Francis leaves.

Michael remembers the moment as a turning point – but this is a brother looking to make sense of what has happened a decade after the fact. The reality is, of course, that there had been moments before that changed Francis, but a sibling can only know so much; as families grow older, they grow apart. Chariandy’s brilliance comes in creating a character out of the moments the brothers do share. Francis coming to the boys’ usual hang out spot with beer for the first time, for example, or asking his brother to give him and his new friends space. There is a greater story happening in the gaps of Michael’s knowledge.

Francis is a memory to Michael before he is even gone; brothers always remember the way things had been the week or the month or the year before. And Francis, who wants to create something new for himself, is caught between two worlds; one that knows him as he has been, and a new one – centred around a Scarborough barbershop and the nascent hip-hop scene – that knows him as he wants to be seen. He acts a certain way around his new friends, changes his ways, and leaves his hopelessly uncool brother just outside of his new life, allowed to participate only if he does not become a liability. Francis tells Michael that he’s got to carry himself better, think about his look, not wear so much on his face. He sees in Michael the things he perceived as shortcomings in himself, which he works to hide. For all his performativeness, though, Francis is still just a young man, trying to genuinely arrive in a place of his own choosing.

Brother’s Scarborough setting allows Chariandy to address other issues – poverty, casual and overt racism, sexuality – which are seamlessly woven into the coming-of-age plot. The deftness in Chariandy’s presentation and his ability to propel his characters with the smallest touch creates a deeply emotional, layered narrative that lingers after reading. The success of Chariandy’s first book set a high bar for the follow up – one that he has certainly cleared.