Review of Kin by Tayari Jones – a harrowing tale of motherlessness | Books

Annie and Vernice (or Niecy, as Annie calls her) are “best friends”, growing up in their hometown of Honeysuckle, Louisiana, in 1950s America. The protagonists are defined by their lack of women and their flexibility to escape from their tragedies and past experiences. In this poignant book about motherhood and sisterhood, Tayari Jones explores the unknown – how we can know someone else, or ourselves.

The two, who speak in alternating chapters, are “not the same, but the same”. Everything is taken care of by mother figures – grandmothers, aunts – and they give meaning to each other’s lonely lives: “When you don’t have your mother, you don’t know who you are.” Annie’s mother has abandoned her but seems to be alive in Memphis, and she is making an effort to befriend her; Niecy, however, is lost forever, after being killed by Niecy’s father. While the former has hope, the latter does not; and therein is a fork (in it) in their future. While Niecy chooses a wiser, more stable way of life – college, a traditional marriage – Annie goes from disaster to disaster, haunted by the feelings of her missing mother. Call it destiny, or call it the sad kind.

Jones’s fictional writing draws you in, and he plays twists and turns, doubles and twists and turns throughout the book, which eases the tension and makes the plot more palpable. “Some truth is too painful to be on your tongue”, we are told; merciless violence and melodrama do not appear on the pages as the two examine the wrongs of racism and racism (there is a scene on a bus, and another in a laundromat, where Jones shows remarkable self-control). She also uses the epistolary device in her award-winning book Women, American Marriageholding women together through words when years tear them apart. When they meet again, will they discover who each is, now that they have new secrets? “I had a hard time deciding whether the secrets and lies were twins, permanent sisters, or just cousins.”

Ultimately, the book contrasts what happens when you love selflessly, endlessly, unconditionally, in the dark; when a mother’s love, or the lack of it, turns poisonous and parasitic; and when a mother’s love, which should nourish and sustain your life, instead drains and destroys it (“Everything needs water to live. But not too much. That’s the paradox of water. You need it, but it can kill you”). In an exchange of ideas and in depth, Kin is a cautionary tale about the limits of love, given and received: “Love, I learned, was the responsibility of a lover: the other did not have to give a gift to the stew. And “that’s why you have to be careful who you give to him.

Is there a greater loss, a greater tear than the loss of the person who gave you life? “Grief is a kind of magic”, as well Kin, Jones throws one at his readers, leaving us convinced that something has been – quietly, unconsciously – touched in our lives.