It's a short novel - I burn through it in less than three hours - but there's hardly a wasted word. I find myself thinking the word "proto-Ferrantian" at some points while the language more evokes a less verbose GGM, which probably says more about my reading habits than about Kincaid's writing, but there you have it. A young girl's coming-of-age story that doesn't dip into clichés or gets sidetracked, but sticks to the shifting bonds between mother and daughter, between childhood friends, between what you thought you understood at 10 and what you cannot voice at 18, building to a quiet finale that's all the more heartbreaking because it doesn't offer any simple resolutions. My first Kincaid, probably not my last.