Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974–

Novelist Kincaid (See Now Then) artfully touches on nature, womanhood, race, and identity in this stunning collection. In several essays, she pays tribute to her Antiguan American heritage and the women in her family who shaped her sense of self. For instance, in “Antigua Crossings,” Kincaid draws an analogy between the unpredictable, inviting, dangerous, and beautiful Carribean Sea and how she felt at age 12 about “all the women” in her family. In “Biography of a Dress,” she reflects on the lengths her mother went to in order to provide for her family despite economic restrictions and racial disparities, remembering a prevailing look of exhaustion in her mother’s face that she, as a child, was too naive to recognize. Elsewhere, Kincaid meditates on The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (“I will never read it again”) and on her garden, a place she loves “very much—not as a refuge from all that is troubling and confounding about that general thing called life, but because all that is troubling about it, all that is confounding about it, is the source for me of multiple pleasures.” Kincaid’s cutting prose shines, and the collection makes for a marvelous account of the author’s life and career. This is a triumph. Agent: Jeff Posternak, Wylie Agency. (Aug.)