See Now Then

by Jamaica Kincaid

A beautifully wrought new novel about marriage and family from the acclaimed author of Mr. Potter

In See Now Then, the brilliant and evocative new novel from Jamaica Kincaid—her first in ten years—a marriage is revealed in all its joys and agonies. This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters, a mother and father and their two children living in a small village in New England, as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future—for, as she writes, “the present will be a now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then.”

Her characters, constrained by the world, despair in their domestic situations. But their minds wander, trying to make linear sense of what is, in fact, nonlinear. See Now Then is Kincaid’s attempt to make clear what is unclear, and to make unclear what we assumed was clear: that is, the beginning, the middle, and the end.


Since the publication of her first short-story collection, At the Bottom of the River, nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, Kincaid has demonstrated a unique talent for seeing beyond and through the surface of things. In See Now Then, she envelops the reader in a world that is both familiar and startling—creating her most emotionally and thematically daring work yet.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Family, Female Authors, The United States Of America

182 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 2013

About the author

Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua (part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda). She lives in North Bennington, Vermont (in the United States), during the summers, and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

See now then this reviewer who has read this book, yes, the See Now Then: A Novel book, and is now, right now, writing this review thinking about its poetry and its cadence and its misery and its joy and its endless train of words and very few sentences; and this reviewer is thinking about the motion of a train and how if you focus on one spot, a signpost perhaps, or a young child sitting on a hill as the train speeds by, how the train is then a blur; and if you focus on one car in the train it is not a blur but it is not a train it is only one of the cars; and the train metaphor reminds this reviewer of how the book is a volcano spewing metaphors, metaphors that connect all things, connect Homer and Heracles, connect the mind's eye and the Paleozoic, but also metaphors that destroy things, that destroy trees and houses in their path, that destroy credibility; and "Good Grief!", that is the sound of this reviewer thinking about Mr. Sweet's anger and reading one more time about his rodent-like scampering through the Shirley Jackson house, yes, it is in that house, then, now, and now again, always in the Shirley Jackson house; and in that house is where this reviewer sees, just in their mind's eye, that the story follows no linear path, and the story is some sort of experiment, perhaps the book is the experiment or perhaps we are the experiment, that is not known as this reviewer reads about love, and hate, and family life, and Greek mythology, and how they are all the same, and always changing; and they all relate to Jamaica Kincaid's life, who is not personally known to this reviewer but the book is personally known to this reviewer and the book seems personal, it seems raw and present, present in the Now of reading the book, not right now, now is the time for writing this review, only in the time of reading was it raw; and it felt private, it was TMI, it was crossing a boundary, and there was a compulsion to continue even so, although at the time, when this reviewer began the book, the book seemed fresh and challenging, but later toward the end of the book, then and from then on, it seemed overly long and unnecessarily wordy, it became this sentence; and if we wanted to read stream of consciousness we could just read this review, we wouldn't need a book, and now this reviewer is thinking about time and how the book tries to show that Now and Then are the same, but not the same, how they create each other; but this reviewer does not think it was successful, not in a way that all the words could justify, except on page 84, that sentence worked then, it works now, that sentence was a moment of Zen, and perhaps also watching how Mr. Sweet rewrote his past, his Nows erasing his Thens, maybe it was successful or maybe not, maybe this reviewer is just not smart enough to comprehend the purpose, or maybe this reviewer should read a different book; but this reviewer did read this book, and Now does not change that; and this reviewer does not regret it although they might not do it again because if they did it again it might not be as beautiful; and it was quite beautiful and sometimes this reviewer shed tears while reading although not enough to water the shrub of genus Forsythia in the yard behind the house of this reviewer, who does not live in the Shirley Jackson house, just the reviewer's house, and so not 5 stars certainly not, maybe 3, maybe 4, it is unclear now while writing this review, maybe it remains unclear now while you are reading this review, but truth is not fixed because Now always erases Then and Then was when this review was written and so Now this review may not be true it may no longer be so.

[Roy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just did not do it for me. I am a fan of Jamaica Kincaid from previous novels so my hopes and expectations were high. Even had they been low, See Now Then still would have fallen short of them. Nothing that I disliked about it is unintentional. It wasn't a case of poor execution. Kincaid wrote this story in the manner that she did with purpose that simply did not appeal to me. The constant repetition of certain words/phrases did little to lull me in. This is a short novel, coming in at under 200 pages. If the repetition was minimized to a more customary amount, the word count of See Now Then probably would not even qualify for novella status. It would have to make due with categorization as a long short story. There is no plot to speak of. Kincaid's goal is not to tell a tale so much as to invoke a mood. The mood is that of hatred. A man hates his wife, his family, his life. We aren't told why specifically, except towards the end when we're informed that the wife was condescending and mean spirited to a waitress. I suppose there is no why. Once you fall out of love with someone and yearn to be with someone else, anyone else, you feel like a prisoner who of course loathes the jailer. But the narrative isn't about the event with the waitress or any other one in particular. It's about a woman being aware that the man she loves does not love her in return, and eventually he does something about it. And it's about the relativity of time, how Now and Then are basically one and the same, a point repeated ad nauseam. We are made aware of the husband's unhappiness from not much after the first sentence - a very long one, as the vast majority of them are, yet another characteristic that I didn't find endearing. The rest of the book serves only to reinforce this point. Gorgeous language can carry a non plot driven story a long way, but I wasn't so swept away by Kincaid's prose that I didn't notice or care that nothing was really happening. Not externally. Not internally. Not at all. I don't care to what degree this or any other novel may be autobiographical. I only care if I was absorbed by the tale, if I came to care about the characters. I was/did not. This is a subjective opinion, as they all are. You may love this book, and if you do, I promise not to hold it against you. :-)

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I read "See Then Now" yesterday afternoon. I read it because I enjoy Jamaica's voice. I also read it because it the vast majority of the book takes place in the house I grew up in, the Shirley Jackson house. Jamaica's house was across the street.

I can see how the appearance of folks from the neighborhood might cause some anxiety to those referenced, but there was nothing that struck me as particularly fanciful. Jamaica is a self-centered person and always has been. I think she's aware of this fact and I've always thought this facet of her personality made her more interesting. Jamaica is a storyteller and I appreciate storytellers far more than reporters. This book is obviously her take on things rather than an attempt to depict things as they actually are/were, but I can see things as they were through her eyes. We all see the past modified by time. Recent studies have shown that each time we remember a past event we are in fact remembering the last remembrance of that event rather than the event itself. Our self image as a product of our memory is nothing more than an ongoing game of telephone we play with ourselves. This is the reason that the courts no longer give weight to eye-witness accounts during criminal proceedings. This is why it's irrelevant whether or not this book is a novel or a memoir.

The book was probably not fair to her ex-husband (and children). I guess I think that's okay. We should all probably be nicer to others, particularly our own families. In my future memoir of my hometown I'll probably be kinder to everyone. If Jamaica had done so it would seem false, particularly given the temporal proximity to her divorce and the abandonment/maturing by her babies. I do think it was fair to the village, a place where the volunteer fire department does spend more time washing their trucks than fighting fires and people are occasionally buried in their hunting clothes. Not that that's all there is to the place, but it is part of it.

[Chrissie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The GR book description makes See Now Then sound intriguing. We are told time is not linear, that the past, present and future blend. I was drawn in by the word play. I wanted to see what more would be said.

As my rating indicates, I am sorely disappointed.

This is a story about the passage of time, marriage and how the two interact. It has some autobiographical elements. While I find the two themes of marriage and the fluidity of time intriguing, I do not like how the story is told.

I do not like the prose. The story reads as a long, drawn out poem. Think prose poetry with frequent repetition of words, phrases and events. The importance of a thought is emphasized by repeating it. Time is jumbled; what is delivered is disconnected. Since that which is presented is incomplete and unclear first time around, events are retuned to again and again, each time a little bit more is added. Only as the blank spots are filled in can one begin to make sense of the story. That time is not linear, that the past present and future are intertwined becomes a mantra, the mantra of a confusing tale. The message delivered becomes repetitive and boring. Moreover, the prose poetry is not in any way pretty!

What is drawn is not only jumbled and repetitive but also unnecessarily negative. No attention is drawn to the good in marriage.

The author reads the audiobook. If you decide to give the book a try choose the paper version instead. Listening is horrible—she never varies her tone. The author / narrator drones on and on and on and on.

One star for both the book and the audio narration. I had trouble with this book from the start. I was hoping it would turn around. I was hoping it would improve. It doesn’t. I do not recommend this book in any format.

**********************

Lucy 4 stars
Girl 4 stars
The Autobiography of My Mother 3 stars
Annie John 3 stars
A Small Place 1 star
See Now Then 1 star

[soulAdmitted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Com'era crudele farti amare una cosa dodici volte e poi trasformarla in un'altra cosa e farti amare quella e poi trasformarla in un'altra cosa e farti amare anche quella e poi rinnovare la cosa che amavi senza dirtelo finché amerai anche quella e poi trasformarla in una cosa che avevi dimenticato e farti amare anche quella e poi trasformarla in una cosa che conosci e che amavi allora e ami adesso e farti pensare che non la conosci affatto.

E le lacrime che pianse allora erano così tante, così tante, così tante, che potevano essere l'inizio di un mare che un giorno sarebbe diventato antico, ma che allora, proprio adesso, vennero assorbite dalla pettorina della salopette acquistata da Gap o dal catalogo Smith & Hawken, dipende, e le lacrime che diedero inizio al mare che un giorno sarebbe diventato antico rimasero semplici lacrime, e la signora Sweet si strinse al petto il giovane Heracles e si rallegrò di aver evitato proprio allora la presenza del dolore, e di aver evitato di conoscere da vicino quella spaventosa entità, quel mondo: il dolore; e le lacrime che pianse allora e adesso, l'Adesso che è costante e immutabile e incline a mettere in ridicolo tutto ciò che esige di essere amato in permanenza, l'Allora che somiglia alla superficie della terra con la crosta apparentemente fissa e stabile per coloro che ne hanno bisogno, quelle lacrime vennero assorbite dal suo indumento materno e finirono anche nel grande mondo dell'acqua e di tutto ciò che ne subisce gli effetti.

Avvertimento amichevole per chi non frequenta Gap, né il catalogo Smith & Hawken: le profezie di lady Kincaid si avverano Allora. Tutte. Al ritmo incauto di una scrittura affidata al vostro respiro. Provvedete in qualche modo, nel caso.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although a great deal has been made about the "autobiographical" elements of the elegant and fearless book, it is a mistake to dismiss too quickly the author's own insistence that it not a roman a clef but "a book about time." As always with Ms. Kincaid's work, the prose is uncanny in its sinuous movement, *demonstrating* rather than asserting how our experience is an ever shifting liquid rope braided of what was, what is, and what will be. While it is true that even the most minor characters (usually retaining their actual names) have their counterparts in the real world, you do yourself a grave injustice if you read this book as an account of "what really happened" to those "real world" counterparts. Rather, using available light, Ms. Kincaid has furthered the project of authors like Virginia Woolf who seek to portray the disturbing simultaneity of all the events in one's life--a simultaneity which both convention and language are always conspiring to disguise.

This is a wonderful book. Leave the gossip where you found it, because gossip is everywhere, while true literary achievement is rare, rare, rare.

[Kristin · Rating 1 out of 5]

What in the world? How did this get put (by me) at the top of my to-read shelf??? I think this is the type of book that is required reading in a literature class because of its unique stream-of-consciousness style. Every chapter is just one big run-on sentence. So hard for me to stick with and enjoy. Weird dis-likable characters. I almost quit early on but then was intrigued by Mr. Sweets secret hate for his wife and his desire to kill her. But even that lost my interest- never going anywhere, and filled with the FREQUENT repetition of the same phrases. "she arrived on a banana boat" "his mother had warned him not to marry her" "he loved his pretty young female students" "the Sweets lived in the Shirley Jackson house." Truth be told, I couldn't finish but did skip to the end. Given these 2 factors, I feel justified in giving a star rating.

I know, I know, you fancy, artsy, literary people know that there is a lot more THERE to notice and analyze. Her children's ties to Greek mythology (their names made it obvious- Persephone and Herecles), the interesting play between past/present/future, the deep emotional stuff. BUT! I still want to enjoy the journey! (At the same time, I don't deny that the author is talented and creative.)

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story of a dissolving marriage. You know it ain't right when you find out they are living in Shirley Jackson's old house in Vermont. May be one of the harshest treatment of family I've ever read- divided loyalties, broken promises, and endless disappointment, all told in Kincaid's shamanistic prose.

Chilling.

[Harley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic novel and a challenge to read. In fact, I don't recommend that you read it. I recommend that you listen to the CD recording read by the author. Kincaid writes long sentences that circle around and repeat words. She says the first story she submitted to the New Yorker was 300 words and only one sentence. Many readers will be bored by the repetition. Yet, when you listen to Kincaid read the novel, the dead words on the page come alive.

This novel is a poetic meditation on family, marriage and love. It is not a narrative novel that flows in a straight line from the beginning to end. It circles around, repeating words and phrases, finding its way slowly, building its emotional bond with the listener. Jamaica Kincaid has a beautiful voice and it is only in listening to the reading does one hear and appreciate the subtleties of her humor.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir/novel is one long loud lament, an agonized and agonizing recall of the dissolution of Kincaid’s marriage to Allen Shawn, son of the famed New Yorker editor, William Shawn, who gave Kincaid her first big break to a career as writer. Every woman, every person wishes someone would love them for who they are, beautiful or not, talented or not, admirable in all things or not. For what is love if there is no flaw…”a flaw being necessary in perfection and in love too.”

Kincaid expresses her own love, and sadness, and regret in this memoir: love she thought she showed to her husband, to her children, and to herself; sadness that her children, though they loved her as one loves the hand that feeds them, were still embarrassed by her otherness; and regret that she could not relieve herself of the weighty burden of her upbringing, her first family, her otherness.

Children were born before Kincaid married, the name Persephone standing in for her firstborn, a daughter, after which she experienced severe post-partum depression. Her husband-to-be, called Mr. Sweet in this fictional memoir, carried the “beautiful” Persephone in the pocket of his coat on walks they took together, bonding. Kincaid mentioned her son Heracles, born three years and nine months after Persephone, so often and so warmly in the opening pages of this short memoir that I felt for the ignored and discarded daughter. But I came to see that Kincaid felt her daughter’s ire and contempt (“which is a benign form of hatred”) and it pained her. Having myself been the object of contempt (who hasn’t?), I cannot judge her reaction—writing a book about her pain—in the way some men who have reviewed her have done, calling her work “half séance-half ambush” (Dwight Garner writing for the New York Times). Writing is what Kincaid does, and does very well indeed. She made me feel that pain as though it were mine.

This being said, some things Garner says in the review are true: many sentences either read like a child’s book, a phrase repeated with one element changed or added, or run on to such length and convoluted meaning that one must backtrack and refocus. Not such a bad thing since one wants to be done with this horror of a breakup so we try to skim but the backing up forces one to internalize those sentences until we realize that every marriage has these things: “love is accompanied by hatred and contempt, too.” One has to decide if one is worth the other. It sounds like Kincaid came down on the side of wishing it weren’t so, though the pain—she has to realize it was felt on both sides—mayn’t have been worth it.

Kincaid is a kind of force as a writer who has shown us time and again that she has long-held feelings about relationships that she examines in their essential truths again and again. Her decision to marry Shawn was not a path that many of us need to walk: her non-renewable visa was coming up for review and in her pack of New York sophisticate friends one suggested “one of us will have to marry Jamaica.” Shawn, presumably as her longtime paramour and father to her children, stepped up.

Kincaid was adrift and striving when she arrived in the United States “on a banana boat” from Antigua when she was still a teen in 1966. She was first published, writing for magazines, in 1971, and became a staff writer for The New Yorker in 1976. She was untethered and maybe a little wild, anxious for every experience and every expression of love.

Kincaid tells us she loved her husband, and we are inclined to believe her. She is eloquent in the ways he did not love her, and each addition to the list hurts us as though it were being said about us. She was not lovely with her naturally black hair coarse as ropes, and her torso like a very old tree, her skin like a piece of old, worn-out fabric, her thick lips “like night mixed up with day”. Kincaid seems almost to relish the bloodthirsty ways her husband loathed her: the sound of her voice “made him want to kill her, take an ax…and chop off her head and then the rest of her body into little pieces” and the sound of her chewing—the sound of “delicately cooked tender flesh parts of cow trapped inside her jaws”—enraged him.

We never hear the ways Kincaid loved her husband, though claims she did. She cooked and cleaned, the chores of loving (and not so loving) housewives. She expressed admiration and delight for his ability to play other people’s music. Mr. Sweet himself created music which “nobody liked,” “no one wanted to hear.” Kincaid was far more popular and financially productive, it is suggested, than he. “Old and the size of a mole” Mr. Sweet had found a younger someone who liked his music, and who coincidentally had the potential to become “the next extraordinary piano genius of the century.” His chance to jump to the next food wagon, it is implied, had come and he grabbed it, tossing insults like firebombs into the wreck of his marriage.

How much of this comes from the battered psyche of a woman scorned? Perhaps all, but while we know that, we know the ways the psyche cannot bear another blow before it needs to lay it down, get it out, scream the house down. And Ms. Kincaid is perfectly able to defend herself in that way. She admits to faults: obsessing over the insults of her youth, endless knitting and purling clothes no one wanted nor could wear, lavishing attention on her large but messy garden, her hundreds of beautiful bulbs eaten close to bloom by the fatted deer. Killed, murdered, eaten at ripeness.

Kincaid mentions several times John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Books I & II, which she had to copy over twice (!) when she was young and misbehaving in school. Milton was nearing 60 years old when Paradise Lost finally published and according to John Leonard, editor and writer of the Introduction to the Penguin edition, that work “is, among other things, a poem about a civil war.” The Fall of Adam and Eve is preordained—a certainty but not necessitated by divine decree. This point has been argued through the ages since the work was published (how could it be both?), and Leonard argues that Milton himself was arguably confused about this point. The Fall was permitted but not forced upon Adam and Eve.

The parallels with Mr. and Mrs. Sweet choosing to destroy themselves in the garden in New England by the River Paran are clear. Mr. Sweet loved Mrs. Sweet’s innocence in the beginning. He taught her things though Mrs. Sweet often did things with the knowledge he shared that he did not understand. While Mrs. Sweet does not offer an apple to Mr. Sweet, she offers a crab soufflé, which gives her a kind of knowledge that love was gone already.

what if God hath seen,
And death ensue? Then I shall be no more,
And Adam wedded to another Eve,
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct. (Paradise Lost ix 826-9)

The end is not the end in this book, but the promise of a new beginning. The Sweets are no more but the garden remains, and springs forth again each season with new growth.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. I really wanted to like this book, and I plodded through the entire 182 pages hoping that it would become engaging and worthy of my time. Did it? No.

It was absolutely impossible for me to get into the rhythm of the narrative. I find it incomprehensible that I finished the entire novel and know the barest of facts about the story- Mr. Sweet hated Mrs. Sweet, the Sweets live in the former home of Shirley Jackson (oh, how that fact was drilled into the reader's head), and Mr. Sweet leaves Mrs. Sweet for a new woman.

Those aren't spoilers either because there is really no story to be told. For me, the narrative was like taking one step forward and then three steps backward until you got to the next nugget of info Kincaid doled out, then repeat.

It was a very frustrating and disappointing read. I can see this being discussed in college literature classes, but I can't imagine anyone reading this for pleasure. I'm glad it was a library book!

Note to college professors: please explain to me any hidden meaning to this novel that would change my very dissatisfied opinion.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I so wanted to rate this 5 stars. I am a fan of Jamaica Kincaid's previous work. I enjoyed listening to her read this book, so much so that I am on my second listen, just to hear it again. You will like this book if you have patience; you may love this book if you love poetry, language, Jamaica Kincaid, or thinking about the passage of time, the tricks of memory, and the sorrow of life; or all of the above. You will not like this book at all if you are looking for linear storytelling, or storytelling of any kind, or a lot of action, or even a plot of any kind.

I did not know that this book was autobiographical, in fact I knew nothing about it before checking it out, other than the fact that I had liked previous books of hers that I had read. As I started listening, I thought Mrs Sweet seemed like she could be someone like Jamaica Kincaid; but until the first time that Mrs Sweet was actually referred to as "Jamaica" by one of the other characters, I didn't know it was her, and that moment was almost shocking when it came. An "oh my gosh -- this is about her" moment, which in the context where it appeared was like a punch to the gut. Gut-wrenching, because by that point you are very much invested in her character and the pain she is going through, and realizing that the character is the author herself just makes it more poignant.

But in the end, I rated it 4 stars and not 5 stars, because it's something like when you're enjoying a painting (my Jamaica-trained inner voice wants to say "a painting, or some other artwork that can be enjoyed in a gallery, or a museum, or some other such place where artworks are enjoyed" ...) and then you notice the brush strokes, and suddenly you're taken out of the painting and instead of enjoying it, you're side by side with the artist, making the painting and deciding just how to paint that particular brush stroke, and now you're no longer enjoying the painting, but thinking about the artist instead. And not just because it's about her in some way, but because she is crafting the work so consciously that you can see the craft. In some ways, that's a pleasure (in the same way that it's a pleasure in poetry) but in other ways, it's an obstacle to appreciating the messages in the book about hidden undercurrents in relationships and the slipperiness of time and memory.

I would, however, like to personally thank the author for the phrase "shy Myrmidons". I think it may be one of my favorite phrases ever.

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank goodness this was a short book. To begin with, the format was a very difficult read. This author wrote in very, VERY long, run-on sentences, that left me, as the reader, breathless...and NOT because of any real action in the book! She wrote this book w/ a constant repetition of words and phrases..."the Sweets lived in the Shirley Jackson house" and "Mrs. Sweet came over on a banana boat", etc...mentioned literally dozens of times, not just on the same page or sentence, but through out the book! UGH!

The story was about a middle-aged bi-racial couple with two children. Mr. Sweet was an a$$, who was raised in a privileged home. Mrs. Sweet was raised on a Caribbean island without parents and illegally immigrated into the United States. She loved her family with all her heart. Mr. Sweet, at one time, loved everything about Mrs. Sweet, BUT, years later, those characteristics that he loved, he soon hated. Without getting too much into the story line of what happened and what the author was trying to convey....that's about all I can say. Mind you, there was no real action of anything happening.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her stream of consciousness, lyrical style, Kincaid channels the inner thoughts of a family of four who live in a bucolic, Vermont town. There is a mother who is a writer (Mrs. Sweet), a father who is a composer with thwarted ambitions (Mr. Sweet), a son with ADD and a love for sports (Heracles), and a beautiful daughter (Persephone). The family formerly held great promise, but now they are resigned and bitter, with great animosity towards one another. The mother and father are undergoing a divorce, and the children are growing up and away.

There is not much of a traditional plot in this book, but it did give me a lot think about.

1) Kincaid paints an illuminating portrait of the father as that very type of cultural aesthete (born and bred in NYC) who is so refined he cannot possibly endure the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Mr. Sweet's desire to live a life of intellectual stimulation and refinement requires vast amounts of money; yet, he instinctively abhors thinking about, or working towards, anything as crass as money. Kincaid does an excellent job of examining this irony and poses an interesting question about art vs. commerce.

2) She also examines the idea of ambition and how that affects the lives of the Sweets. Mr. Sweet insists in working in absolute silence in his studio above the garage and feels frustrated and underappreciated that he is not more successful. When he meets a young female student who properly appreciates his gifts and talents, he asks for a divorce from Mrs. Sweet. Kincaid (in the narrative voice of Mrs. Sweet) points out that Mr. Sweet had many successes in his life (his loving family, his large house) and that he might not have been able to properly appreciate them in light of his overwhelming ambition.

3) And finally, Kincaid raises interesting questions about the role of memory over time. When Mrs. Sweet reflects upon the dissolution of her marriage, she thinks about what first attracted her to Mr. Sweet, why they got married, the various decrepit apartments they lived in (prior to buying the big house in Vermont), and the births of their children. In each recollection, Kincaid ascribes base motives to Mr. Sweet. She says that Mr. Sweet married her so she wouldn't have to be deported "back to where she came from on the banana boat." Is it fair for Mrs. Sweet to ascribe negative emotions to the past because they presently exist in the relationship?

The novel's discursive, lyrical style made it occasionally challenging to read, but the questions it posed were good fodder for thought.

[Vivian Valvano · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, to anyone who insists on belaboring whether this is really a novel or just a bitter, only slightly shaded autobiographical account of Kincaid's marriage (despite the clear label given by the author on the cover page), get over it! It's a novel! Children live in a father's pocket! Time shifts and dissolves (see now; see then ...) in the streams of consciousness of characters! This is fiction; this is literature in operation. SEE NOW THEN: A NOVEL is an elegantly written account of an inelegant situation, the failed marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Sweet and its effects on the family. She is an author who tries to maintain a separate area of their home in which to do her work. Her mind dwells often on what went wrong in her marriage, on why Mr. Sweet no longer loves her, on how much she loves(d) him, on their journey forward to the "Shirley Jackson house" in New England where they now live. He is a composer/musician who has been thwarted in his ambitons and leaves his wife to deal with the myriads of creditors asking for their payments. His mind dwells meanly and dangerously on how much he hates her; he constantly belittles her in every way, including sneering repetitions of how she came to the US "on a banana boat." Snobby, although financially broke, Mr. Sweet comes from a well-heeled Manhattan background and has an amusing but scary fetish for remembering the lovely apartments and elevators and other accoutrements of his youth. They have two rather startling children, "the young Heracles," who has the brawn and physical strength of his namesake but apparently has serious ADD, and "the beautiful Persephone," her father's favorite (and you can guess what that means for her relationship with her mother). Divorce is imminent. But this novel is much more than an account of a failed marriage or even of a family of complicated individuals. The most basic, elemental questions of what time does to people, how people react to the passage of time, what can be controlled and what cannot, what is reality and what is perception ... and more ... are considered here; of course, those "elemental" matters are serious beyond measure. Kincaid's graceful narration, trademark chant-like style, and prowess with images and allusions yield a unique and effectively disturbing novel.

[Chaitra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I should sum up this review in five words. It was not for me. It most definitely wasn't. But then again, I do think there's something else wrong with this book. It's a story of a family of 4, the Sweets - Mr Sweet is a mediocre composer struggling in a small town in Vermont, Mrs. Sweet who came on a banana boat, their son the young Heracles who doesn't seem to have any distinguishing characters other than his youth and their daughter the beautiful Persephone, ditto. And they all live in the Shirley Jackson house in Vermont.

There is no plot. There is a portrait of a marriage, true. But it's a thinly sketched one, lost in a barrage of redundant words. Even with those words the page count of this book is measly. Without them, it would have not stretched further than a ten page chapter. Because when you get to the bottom of it, the man is the worst creature imaginable on earth and the woman came on a banana boat. He loved her once and now he doesn't anymore because she writes about Jamaica and he's a failure. My gut feeling was that this was a one-sided examination of it, if it was anything at all. No one likes Mrs. Sweet. And her only fault seems to be her excessive writing and that she's Jamaican.

It failed on an aesthetic level too with me. If the repetition idea was supposed to make this narration hypnotic, it didn't work. Quite the contrary, every time I read the words "Shirley Jackson house"/"young Heracles"/"beautiful Persephone", I felt an urge to scream. It's a good thing the book was short, if not I'd be a nervous wreck.

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jamaica Kincaid says this novel came from her attempt to write a different kind of sentence-- at least, that's what I remember hearing her say at a series of reading/craft talks over the past several years. Felt the presence of Woolf and Stein throughout this book (although I have a much better handle on Woolf, what I remember of Stein was very insistently brought to mind). Kincaid's sentences are gorgeous and they feel very much like the way a certain kind of mind works: lyrical, associative. But SEE NOW THEN is remarkable beyond the sentence level, a meditation on narrative and consciousness and a relentless look at the toll exacted by a disastrous marriage. There aren't any answers for that kind of suffering in this novel, just as those answers are not readily available in real life. I'm still trying to figure out what to make of the perspective throughout. I don't feel the extreme empathy that Woolf conjures for all of her characters in TO THE LIGHTHOUSE or MRS DALLOWAY. But I would like to know how other readers feel about that.

I would recommend hearing Ms. Kincaid read this aloud if at all possible. Here's a link to a podcast:
http://www.lapl.org/collections-resou...

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

See now Then. Then is Now. Now is Then. At first, she had to think about the sentences, the rush of thoughts, the constant flow, because Then is Now and Now is Then and the circle of life is not linear, she thought, but the language, the language Then and the language Now is beautiful.

Then that being said, once I got used to the flow of the book and the unusual sentence structure, I was swept up in a sad sad story about a marriage gone painfully, sadly, awfully wrong. The three star rating that I gave this book is primarily due to the depressing subject and the cloud that never, ever lifts.

The back and forth, Then and Now storytelling is unusual and it does tend to try to round out the picture of the story in the sense that a flashback would do. This is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Sweet and how they perceive their worlds Now and how they perceive their worlds Then. It is also the story of their two children, Herakles and the Beautiful Persephone whose names I am certain are symbolic if I would take the time to research that.

I think a bit of joy would have lightened the heaviness of this book.

[HomeInMyShoes · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a slow-paced stream of consciousness book. Unlike some like Thomas Bernhard's The Loser run like a freight train, but this is a much slower paced brain. Might be closer to 3 stars, but I grew weary of the "Shirley Jackson" house. I'm sure there was something the author was trying to convey through repeatedly reminding me of this fact in the story, but it lost its usefulness.

[Darkowaa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Mama Kincaid's best work. The writing is cute with all the repetition and descriptions, but nothing happens in the story. Maybe I need to re-read this at a different stage of my life; re-reading certain books/stories later can bring about some more understanding and/or appreciation for the characters and the story. But yeah... read everything else by Kincaid, not this one lol. I highly recommend 'Annie John' and 'Lucy'. Oh and of course 'A Small Place' if you're in a fiery mood :)

[Ann Phelan Phelan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't follow it..the writing style drove me crazy..I have read ALL of Ms. Kincaid's books. Having lived in Antigua and having been married to an Antiguan I feel a loyalty and understanding with her writing and experiences...this book, I could not get into..will try another time

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is less a novel than an exercise in poetic monologue, in Voice and Character--a darkly playful dirge-for-marriage shot through with surprising laugh-aloud gallows humor; an engine burning the dense and dangerous fuel of bitterness; a book only for the very brave and the unhurried, for those willing to take a careful Orphic expedition through an unsettling landscape where, perhaps, nothing at all may be rescued. * In short, a middle-aged Jewish couple and their daughter and son find the family dissolving, the marriage ending, and we see it all through the eyes of the Caribbean, immigrant, writer-wife, in her abandonment. * In one sense, the novel's theme is marriage as culture shock. * In another sense, as the title suggests, Kincaid's story centers around the way in which perception may become an exhausting contest between memory, the past, and the-moment-now (and woe to those who lose the battle, those who are punished with ego-incarceration, with the hell of self-torment). * With its fetish for voice, its complete rejection of plot in favor of rarefied stream-of-consciousness or phenomenological narrative, this is the sort of post-modern novel that makes you a little worried serious literature really is going the way of much contemporary poetry, very elite-minded and marginally accessible--yes, and yet it's also such a damned good read, if you have the patience, if you will not (as I was tempted to) overreact and shout: pretension! * Be warned, this isn't a book you can read through with good speed, at your normal clip; the book demands that you allow it alone to call all the shots. * Kincaid has produced, here, exactly the kind of novel other writers fear to read, one with so strong a voice that it threatens to influence one's own style in an un-asked-for manner. * In the end, what is it that “See Now Then” leaves us with? Maybe just this. There are many literary references to Greek mythology, and the narrator's abandonment--as it hits home in the final section, left physically by her husband, left emotionally by her children--conveys just how awful a thing it is to be a god in whom no one any longer has faith, a deity who has lost all her worshipers.

On a final, practical note: I recommend springing the extra six bucks and buying the audio book on CD, which gives you the unforgettable experience of hearing Kincaid read this work.

[Marilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

que brisa esse livro! não faço ideia de como classificaria esse tipo de literatura... fiquei lembrando do Edouard Louis dizendo que a Jamaica Kincaid mostrou que escrever auto ficção ou memórias podia ser feito de uma maneira completamente diferente - e é real.
em termos estilísticos, não tem tanto a ver com "Autobiografia da minha mãe", então quem vai nesse achando que é parecido pode se decepcionar.
eu provavelmente não entendi metade das referências e alegorias, mas a proposta é bem interessante e me cativou.

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

See Now Then is a wonderful, funny book with some of the most beautiful sentences I have ever read. I wish I could imitate the writing so that you could see what it is like but I can't. I've heard that it is the story of Jamaica Kincaid's marriage - whether it is or is not, it is biting about marriage and parenthood in a complex way. Mrs. Sweet met Mr. Sweet in New York. He writes music and has discovered that his marriage to Mrs. Sweet is not what he wants. She juggles creditors that they can't afford to pay, deals with being the mother of their two children and thinks all the time - sometimes about the island where she was born and sometimes about where she is now. I'd love to say that this book is also about time and perspective but those thoughts are just too big and sad. It would be a great book for a book club to tackle - I would love to hear people talk about seeing Then Now and seeing Now Then.

[Ruth]

There has been a lot of hype about this book and it sounded interesting. When I saw it on the library shelf, I had to grab it. I had just finished the new Jen Lancaster book so I thought since this was newer than my next book, I would read it first so that I could get it back to the library so that someone else could read it.

This is a story about the disintegration of a marriage. It takes place in a small town in Vermont and tells about the marriage of Mr And Mrs. Sweet. Yes, they are referred to as Mr and Mrs Sweet! The book is described as the author's first book in ten years and is "brilliant and evocative". The style of writing reminds me of something more akin to the 1800's than that of the 2013 publication date. I have only read 18 pages and I am not sure I can get through any more. It is so hard to get published that I am not sure how this one made the cut!

[Peebee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I very rarely do not finish books. I very rarely do not finish short books of less than 200 pages. I even more rarely do not finish books in the last two weeks of my reading challenge.

But this book is just abominable and was really getting in the way of trying to read other books, and when I discovered another book in my possession which worked for the slotted task, that was it -- I decided it was time to cut my losses. If you like repetitious, run-on, stream of consciousness writing about a family of very unlikeable people, then maybe you would tolerate this (I can't imagine anyone "liking" this book, but maybe that person is out there). For me, I have better things to do with my time, like watching paint dry, root canals, trying on bathing suits, etc.

[Sharon M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow...I've never read any of her work before and had read the reviews saying that it was autobiographical. I mostly felt that it was sad - a very sad portrayal of marriage and parenthood. While we all feel angry and maybe border on hate for moments in our marriage and family life, I pray that most people don't feel the horrible anger and hatred that everyone in this book seemed to have for each other at varying times. Add to that the writing style where sentences were pages long - I was just glad this book want any longer!

[Joey · Rating 1 out of 5]

As I said in my college course, while reading this novel I felt as if I were at a holiday gathering, attempting to leave and an old, senile aunt won't leave me alone. This book was basically try-hard blathering for too many pages. I got the dismantled marriage message, but the rest of the writing was just unnecessary.

If you enjoy books where you need to read one sentence at least three times to even start to comprehend it's purpose, this book is for you.

[María José Moreno Fernández · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahora y entonces es un libro no apto para todos los públicos.
Dicen que la escritora es audaz. Para mí...es como si se hubiera fumado algo y después hubiera escrito este libro.
Una especie de venganza de una mujer ama de casa a su marido. Con muchos desvaríos.
Lo comencé a leer y a medio lo dejé.
Lo siento pero no empatizo con la escritora ni con la protagonista y no he podido seguir con la historia.
No es mi momento ahora para leerlo.

[Shauna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. I kept going, hoping I would get into the lyrical beauty of the words at least, but I couldn't. I plodded through the whole book. I have no understanding of the characters. The daughter seemed almost a figment of Mr. Sweet's imagination. In the end there was too much repetition and not enough story.