AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER, ...

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER, by Jamaica Kincaid (Plume: $7.). Most of these brief short stories take the form of interior or spoken monologues that focus on relationships between young girls and their parents. In “My Mother,” a girl’s imagination soars as she sees her mother assume the awe-inspiring stature of a mountain or a goddess. Kincaid strings maternal advice and admonitions together to form a tart, sharply observed portrait of a no-nonsense mother and her weary child in “Girl” (“Always eat your food in a such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.”). Set in the Caribbean, these stories have a lighter tone than the author’s popular stranger-in-a-strange-land novel, “Lucy.”