Word: brotherly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...drunken and beat up father tells the older brother he is not his son, a theme of uncertainty reminiscent of earlier Southern writers William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren. In anguish, the older brother orders the younger one not to call him by his name. He feels he has no identity, that he belongs to no one and deserves no name...
...steal alcohol, the older brother comes across a drunk, who asks his name but then tells...
Ironically, the older brother adopts the alcoholism and abusiveness of the father, constantly needing "medicine" to make it through the moment and hitting his younger brother in a drunken rage. But he is not just "mean," as his younger brother describes him at one point. The teenager is looking for salvation, journeying within the city limits, searching for good...
...FLASHBACKS, the older boy recalls the baptism of his baby brother and being told by his parents that he has not been baptized. In the course of the story, the older brother struggles to find purification. After his father tells him he is not his son, he swims the harbor looking for purification. Instead he finds himself vomitting on the other side. He lies in ditchwater and in sewage, hoping to cleanse himself. He enters a church and baptizes himself, pouring Holy Water over his gasoline-and blood-soaked body. But in the end it is his own blood that...
...novel experiments with modes of narration. Vilmure borrows Faulkner's method of narrating through more than one persona, as each brother tells part of the story. The younger brother's narration is skillfully executed, as he relates what a child sees. Vilmure follows the boy's mind processes perceptively and eloquently...