Kin by Tayari Jones review – a haunting tale of motherlessness
Two friends, united by their missing mothers, come of age in segregation-era America, in a cautionary tale about the limits of love
Annie and Vernice (or Niecy, as Annie calls her) are “cradle friends”, brought up in their home town of Honeysuckle, Louisiana, in 1950s America. The protagonists are defined by their motherlessness and their diverging drives to escape their individual tragedies and pre-written destinies. In this haunting novel of motherhood and sisterhood, Tayari Jones writes into unknowability – how far we can know another person, or indeed oneself.
The pair, who speak in alternating chapters, are “not the same, but still the same”. Each is tended to by mother figures – grandmothers, aunts – and gives meaning to each other’s lonely, questioning existence: “When you don’t have your mother, you don’t really know who you are.” Annie’s mother has abandoned her but is apparently alive in Memphis, and she makes it her obsession to reconcile with her; Niecy’s, on the other hand, is lost for ever, murdered by Niecy’s father. Where the former is holding out hope, the latter has none; and herein lies the fork in their futures. While Niecy chooses the sensible, stable life path – college, a traditional marriage – Annie spirals from tragedy to tragedy, consumed by thoughts of her missing mother. Call it destiny, or a kind of grieving.
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