Mr. Potter

I thought I had read something by Kincaid, but this may be my first. Extraordinarily interesting author and to this point in her career (2002), her works were mostly biographical in some way. This is the story of her father, and it's a memory piece, with him remembering his parents and events in his......more

The book Mr. Potter, speaks to the life of Mr. Potter, an illiterate chauffeur living on the island of Antigua. We are told of his family history, given insight to his family tree and his overall life. I have to say, I did enjoy or appreciate this novel. I could not get over the constant repetition.......more

At first the method of repetition turned me off, but I soldiered on and halfway through I began to understand what Kincaid was up to and accept some of the repetition in the following ways: 1. A refrain or chorus that is repeated throughout, such as the repeating of Mr. Potter's birth and death dates......more

A hard book to review, mainly because it doesn't really have a plot and barely has characters and it isn't even entirely clear as to which genre it belongs – memoir or novel – though the one thing it is closer to than anything else is poetry. Let me demonstrate with the opening paragraph: And that da......more

Kincaid, Jamaica. Mr. Potter. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Print. Jamaica Kincaid has written a beautifully lyrical prose about a father that she never knew personally but knew of. Mr. Potter details not only Kincaid’s family history, but also Antigua. She details in repetition......more