Word: sisterly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Both of his parents were schoolteachers, although his father died when Walcott was only one, and the house in St. Lucia that he, his twin brother and older sister grew up in was filled with books. But the allure of the English language, and of the English poetry recited aloud in his classrooms, came tempered with a sense of exclusion from white British culture, the resentment felt by a subject of an alien, occupying power. In one of his early poems, he pondered his faraway African heritage and asked...
...there, but he just can't hear it. The narrator is teenager Jane Singer, second daughter of a gently Jewish family from Cleveland and worshipper of Holden Caulfield. Jane tells about, among others, her mother, who divorces Jane's father and takes up the violin, and her formerly promiscuous sister, who marries an Orthodox doctor and gives birth to a boy Jane jokingly calls "the Little Messiah." Except for eloquent moments, the reader longs for a little verve. Jane is a nice girl who should go to college, marry a nice boy and leave narrating no-hitters to another heroine...
...morning to find the word divorce printed on her forehead in black felt pen, the reader can't help tingling with anticipation that more fun awaits. And for a while Douglas Coupland delivers, drawing delectable characters such as narrator Tyler with his Smithsonian- class collection of shampoos; his sister Daisy, a neohippie in blond dreadlocks; and his mother Jasmine, a twice-divorced hippie with the felt- penned forehead...
...face of these shortcomings, honesty seems the best policy. What have I been hiding from myself? A relationship with Auntie Nora's pet poodle? Infatuation with my sister's lacey underwear? I fear such perversions must be deeply buried, and that much more psychobabble will be required to dent my native prudery. I get depressed sometimes--when England lose at soccer, or my bank account throttles into overdraft--but these moments hardly constitute a recipe for a session in therapy...
Later I went to the authorities in Jajce and told my story. I was taken to Travnik, where I knew my mother and sister-in-law had gone before our village was cleansed. I found my sister-in-law, who asked me where the others were. I couldn't tell her they were dead...