Lives of a Brother

It is no coincidence that Brother, the title of David Chariandy’s new novel, is similar to that of the memoir by Jamaica Kincaid. My Brother is Kincaid’s account of her younger sibling’s battle with AIDS. In the book she writes that she is surprised to learn that despite her brother’s sexual bravado in the company of women, he privately pursued intimate friendships with men. Kincaid’s memoir unfolds in an Antigua of economic despair where opportunities for young people are scarce. It’s a story about loss, the waste of potential, and how those we love best can remain a mystery.

So, too, it is with Chariandy’s new novel, in which an air of mystery surrounds the narrator’s older brother, Francis, especially the nature of his relationship with his best friend. When the story opens, Francis has been dead 10 years. The narrator, Michael, is Francis’s 20-something brother. He cares for their mother in the same gray, dilapidated Scarborough, Ontario, complex...