Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright, Antigua native Jamaica Kincaid’s novels display “a poet’s understanding of how politics and history, private and public events, overlap and blur” (New York Times), and examine the powerful ties and inherent loss in the mother-child relationship. Her first book, At the Bottom of the River, a collection of short stories, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and received the Morton Darwen Zabel Award. Paying witness to the pressures of poverty and British colonial rule, her other works include Annie John, The Autobiography of My Mother, Lucy, A Small Place, Mr. Potter, and My Brother, winner of the Prix Fémina Étranger. Set in New England, her new novel is a look at the manifold joys and agonies of marriage, as a family attempts to grasp the passage of time.