Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John tells the story of a girl's painful growth into young womanhood. Annie Victoria John, the narrator, progresses from a blissful childhood in Antigua, when she is the center of her mother's attention, to a trying adolescence filled with fierce maternal conflict, to her departure from Antigua for England at the age of seventeen. (Taken from SparkNotes)

I know that this summary isn't a very good one, but there really is nothing to this book. It's told in the first person point of view and is pretty much all about the life of a young girl named Annie. She grows up, makes new friends, rebels against her parents, feels animosity towards her mother, the usual adolescent stuff. It is the ultimate coming of age story, rife with symbolism and themes that I was unable to discern. Yes, this was another summer reading book and a much easier read than The Shipping News. For one, it was a lot shorter: only 148 pages to the 300+ of The Shipping News. It was also more interesting to read and in my opinion better written than the former. As I stated before, there was a lot of literary signifcance to this book that I did not figure out, and I cannot understand how anyone else can figure it out. So I'm resorting to SparkNotes once again to try to do my summer work. But if you ever have to read this book for school, just know that it's a short and fairly easy read.

5 out of 10.