The city of which the neighbourhood is a suburb is, I think, Toronto, but really it could be any big city, in almost any Western country. It is a story, effectively vague, of a young man deeply “troubled” and of a younger brother carrying “history,” and of a mother showing now the creep of “madness.”Ĭhariandy brings the neighbourhood of Scarborough to life, showing it as a place where a constant influx of immigrants from different countries around the world first settle when they arrive in Canada, seeing their life there as a stage on the road to either them or their children one day making it in their new world and moving on to more desirable areas. For these newer neighbours, there is always a story connected to Mother and me, a story made all the more frightening through each inventive retelling among neighbours. And they often come under challenging circumstances, from the Caribbean, from South Asia and Africa and the Middle East, from places like Jaffna and Mogadishu. But new people are always arriving in the Park. Some of our neighbours have memories of the events that began with the shootings that hot summer. I found it eye-opening, though, because I’d never really thought of Canada as having the kind of immigrant neighbourhoods described so vividly in the book. It’s a story of how the immigrant dream can go wrong, but it’s not overtly hammering polemics at the reader nor too heavily making a ‘point’. This is a short book with no unnecessary padding, and its brevity makes it all the more powerful.

When they are caught up in an incident of street violence, it begins a chain of events that will ultimately lead to tragedy. So the boys, good at heart, have too many opportunities to drift into the ‘wrong’ crowd. But she has to struggle hard to make ends meet, working several jobs, often having to leave the boys alone and usually exhausted when she finally gets home. She is strict with the boys, with the usual immigrant dream that they will make successful lives in this society that is new to her. Aisha’s visit prompts Michael to think back to his childhood and teen years in the 1980s, when he and his older brother Francis were being brought up by their mother, an immigrant to Canada from Trinidad whose husband had deserted her when the boys were young. A young man goes to meet an old friend who is returning to visit the neighbourhood where she grew up and he still lives.

Sparknotes brother david chariandy