At the Bottom of the River

Kincaid’s first book, which announced the arrival of a singular talent, “will burn on your shelf” (Derek Walcott).

Reading Jamaica Kincaid is to plunge gently into another way of seeing both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her voice is, by turns, naively whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partly remembered, partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbean—family, manners, and landscape—as distilled and transformed by Kinca...