Book Review: See Now Then

See Now Then: A Novel by Jamaica Kincaid
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: February 5, 2013
Length: 5 hours and 46 minutes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

In See Now Then, the brilliant and evocative new novel from Jamaica Kincaid—her first in ten years—a marriage is revealed in all its joys and agonies. This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters—a mother, a father, and their two children, living in a small village in New England—as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future: for, as she writes, “the present will be now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then.” Her characters, constrained by the world, despair in their domestic situations. But their minds wander, trying to make linear sense of what is, in fact, nonlinear. See Now Then is Kincaid’s attempt to make clear what is unclear, and to make unclear what we assumed was clear: that is, the beginning, the middle, and the end.

It’s hard for me to describe See Now Then. It’s the non-linear study of the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Sweet. The prose is wonderfully crafted and poetic. I listened to this book on audio and after reading other reviews from people who read the book in print, I think audio is the way to go. Print readers complained of Ms. Kincaid’s massively long run-on sentences and the lack of paragraph breaks of which I was completely unaware. Ms. Kincaid narrates the book herself and does a fantastic job. She was born in St. John’s Antigua and her accent made the book sound even more beautiful. It’s not a happy book – Mr. and Mrs. Sweet don’t like each other much at all – but I still found it almost relaxing to listen too because Ms. Kincaid’s voice is so lyrical. It was almost like listening to a very long poem.

This book is definitely unique – it’s written in a style that I have never read before. Because of this, it’s probably not for everyone. If you are a practical reader who wants a straightforward plot, then this is not the book for you. But if you’re open to reading outside your comfort zone or you place a high value on prose, then give this book a try.

(I received this audio book courtesy of the Solid Gold reviewers program at Audio Jukebox.)