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    A Million Aunties
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    A Million Aunties
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    A Million Aunties
    Ebook181 pages3 hours

    A Million Aunties

    By Alecia McKenzie

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    American-born artist Chris is forced to reconsider his own concept of "family" during a visit to his mother’s Caribbean homeland.

    "Alecia McKenzie’s tender new novel [is] an emotionally resonant ode to adopted families and community resilience."
    --New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

    Shortlisted for the 2020 Caribbean Readers’ Awards (Best Adult Novel)!

    Longlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award!

    "Delightfully original, this novel centers Chris, an American who travels to his mother’s homeland of Jamaica to reflect and heal after tragedy strikes. What he encounters is unexpected, complicated and, perhaps, just what he needs."
    --Ms. Magazine

    "Emotional, enthralling and heartfelt...A story of loss and the infinite types of love."
    --Woman's World

    After a personal tragedy upends his world, American-born artist Chris travels to his mother's homeland in the Caribbean hoping to find some peace and tranquility. He plans to spend his time painting in solitude and coming to terms with his recent loss and his fractured relationship with his father. Instead, he discovers a new extended and complicated "family." The people he meets help him to heal, even as he supports them in unexpected ways. Told from different points of view, this is a compelling novel about unlikely love, friendship, and community, with surprises along the way.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAkashic Books
    Release dateNov 17, 2020
    ISBN9781617758959
    Unavailable
    A Million Aunties
    Author

    Alecia McKenzie

    ALECIA McKENZIE is a Jamaican writer currently based in France. Her first collection of short stories, Satellite City, and her novel, Sweetheart, have both won Commonwealth Writers prizes. Sweetheart has been translated into French and was awarded the Prix Carbet des Lycéens in 2017. Her other books include Stories from Yard, Doctor’s Orders, and When the Rain Stopped in Natland. McKenzie’s work has appeared in a range of literary magazines and in anthologies such as Stories from Blue Latitudes, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, Bridges, Global Tales, Girls Night In, and To Exist Is to Resist. She edited a collection of contemporary Jamaican short stories and coedited Where We Started: Stories of Living Between Worlds, an anthology of writing from different countries.

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    Reviews for A Million Aunties

    4/5

    34 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5

      Delightful story that I enjoyed. Well written, delicious details! Really. So atmospheric. The reader will love some of the characters here and feel different things for others. Each chapter is written by a different character. I highly recommend this book!

    • 4/5
      This was a lot of fun. It's told somewhat like a collection of linked stories or anecdotes. A painter goes to a Caribbean island to get-away and concentrate on his work. He takes a room in the home of his agent's aunt. He is drawn into her circle of family, friends, and neighbors.The interactions among this cast of eccentric characters leads to adventures and revelations. Eventually they all end up in Paris. Somehow it all makes sense, sort of.I'm searching local libraries for more by Alecia McKenzie.
    • 4/5
      Once I finally received this book, it took me a little while to get going on it. Once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, the writing style, and the setting descriptions.Told from multiple points of view, we receive a full picture of the family AND found family that Chris and his friends have made. Moving from New York to the Carribbean (Jamaica, maybe), to Paris, the stories move along quite nicely.Chris, a painter, loses his wife to murder and escapes to the island home of Aunt Della, his agent's aunt. There he meets Della's neighbors and discovers more about his own family.
    • 4/5
      I really loved this little jewel of a book. It's very much literature, but still a nice read with great characters.You have to love anything where the characters pull together to take care of each other. It's about an artist whose wife died.It's about an orphan boy who was raised by an "auntie".It's about community and finding families.
    • 4/5
      I received this book as part of LibraryThing’s early reviewer program.I really enjoyed the ARC A Million Aunties. The characters were all very interesting and engaging, and I wanted to know more about all of them. Their backstories and interactions with each other are very well thought out and well written. I wanted more (a lot more actually. It needs to be an epic like The Thorn Birds) and I'm really looking forward to reading the final work!
    • 4/5
      A slice of the lives of a group of artists and eccentric individuals. Chris from America goes to visit his mother's birthplace in Jamaica. We see the points of view of the various people. Chapters switch points of view and voice. It varies between 1st person and 3rd person. Some characters are in Jamaica, some in New York. They form a family. They all travel together to Paris at the end.
    • 4/5
      A strange, slim book offering a brief peek into the lives of several creative and/or intriguing personalities, McKenzie's work is more a series of vignettes of folks whose lives overlap. The reader starts by getting acquainted with Chris who has gone to his mother's home country of Jamaica to get over the death of his lover, Lidia. He stays at the home of a friend's "auntie" and she soon becomes an even more important character than Chris himself. It is unclear if McKenzie wanted to write about life in Jamaica, artists in New York City, or the joys of Paris, but somehow she combines all of these into one short book. What McKenzie does well is introduce characters. The book has plenty from the mysterious Stephen who doesn't know who is mother is to the Jamaican woman who wears a fur coat even on hot Jamaican days, Miss Pretty. The women in the book seem stronger and more real than the male characters do. Leroy, the plumber, seems a bit of a stereotype, and Stephen comes across as a bit unknowable (although that is not strange considering he doesn't really know where he is from or who his family is.) Chris - the character who is the first the reader meets - disappears into painting flowers and eventually seems almost forgettable. Della and Vera are strong, West Indian women, one a talented gardener and the other a gifted seamstress. Feliciane is their sophisticated counterpart, comfortable in NY or Paris, a person of the world. Jasmine is a character who seems thrown in rather capriciously, and although we might like to know more about her life, we learn very little. In short, McKenzie excels at creating characters, but do not expect any real narrative in her book. There is no plot here. Those who read a great deal may argue that plot is not necessary; this book is for those who appreciate character studies, vivid vignettes, and a collage approach to writing. One might say that wondering who Stephen's real mother is could be the main plot, but that would be stretching the book to its seams. The theme of creating family and family being whoever is there to support and sustain comes across strongly. The title might describe the theme of "it takes a village to raise a child." The book is a brief and enjoyable read. It is just that we are left wanting to know more about the characters we have met and wondering if we will ever meet them again.
    • 3/5
      I thought parts of this slim novel(la) were incredibly strong, especially the parts that took place in Jamaica. I could feel, inhale and touch the land, its people and their way of life. I found the other locations much less engaging, especially the cliche-ness of New York City and the art world. I'm an artist, so maybe I'm over critical. I also did not care for the odd colloquialisms such as "fuckery" and all of that. I thought it dummied down an otherwise strong investigation into grief, friendship, love. The characters were complex sometimes (although without much backstory as to why), but incredible cliche other times. So overall, I found the novel inconsistent and surprisingly hard to engage with and finish. That said, I think this author has a lot of potential and I would seek out other stories, especially if they centered in the Caribbean.
    • 3/5
      Alecia McKenzie's A Million Aunties is a novel about the meaning of family and resilience in the face of trauma. Following a cast of characters and points of view from New York to Jamaica and, eventually, to Paris, the novel examines how individuals deal with loss. The novel begins with Chris, an American-born artist who travels to rural Jamaica after the loss of his wife to a terrorist attack. There he hopes to paint flowers--something he could never do properly--as a way to honor his wife, who was a groundskeeper at a city park. In Jamaica, he stays with Miss Della, the "auntie" of his agent and art dealer, Stephen, and Miss Pretty, all of whom have experienced loss and tragedy. Throughout the novel, these individuals and others around them come together to form a makeshift family that are focused around the many women whom they have lost and who have shaped who they are. It is a story that interweaves individual loss and grief into a narrative that shows the power of art and nature to heal, and our ability to form familial bonds with others. Although overly sentimental at times, it is a good read for those who enjoy stories of resilient women.