New-to-me Canadian writer David Chariandy’s novel Brother is an elegy to family. Published in 2017, this novel topped all the Best Of lists and won a Writers’ Trust of Canada award, as well as being nominated for the Giller. I have had it on my TBR shelf for several years, and in an attempt to tackle some of my backlist, I finally read it.

Michael and his older brother Francis live with their Trinidadian mother in The Park, a “cluster of low-rises and townhomes and leaning concrete apartment towers” – a not-so-nice suburb of Toronto. Their father is long gone.

When the novel opens, Michael is meeting with his friend, Aisha. They haven’t seen or spoken to each other in a decade and her arrival opens Michael up to the trauma of an event that transpired many years ago – one that he and his mother have never gotten over. This tragedy is alluded to early on in the book, but I’ll be vague about it here.

Brother toggles back and forth between Aisha’s return – which dredges up the past – and the past itself.

Francis was my older brother. His was a name a toughened kid might boast of knowing, or a name a parent might pronounce in warning. But before all of this, he was the shoulder pressed against me bare and warm, that body always just a skin away.

Francis and Michael are close, especially as young boys when they are often left to fend for themselves as they are left alone while their mother works. Their mother worked as a cleaner, and often took on extra work to try to make ends meet.

She was never happy about abandoning us, and if she learned the evening before of an impending night shift, she would spend precious sleep time cooking and worrying over the details of meals and activities for the following day.

Chariandy captures the poverty, violence, and hopelessness of the lives of the people who live in The Park, but he also captures the sibling bond, the friendships and the hope for a better future. I particularly admired the subtlety of Francis’s relationship with Jelly, a wannabe DJ.

When Aisha arrives back at The Park, she tries to unclog the grief Michael and his mother have been stifled by for many years. And by allowing Michael to finally tell his story, perhaps she has succeeded.

Beautiful writing and a timely story about police violence and the immigrant experience make Brother worth checking out.