Review | ‘Kin’ by Tayari Jones: a tale of love, loss and sisterhood
Tayari Jones's new novel 'Kin' explores the lifelong bond between two childhood friends in the American South who are united by their shared experience of maternal loss. The story follows their divergent paths into adulthood and their eventual reconnection.
Why it matters
It highlights the literary exploration of themes like sisterhood, trauma, and social class in the mid-20th century American South.
In Kin , the latest offering from Women’s Prize-winning author Tayari Jones, childhood friends Vernice and Annie are bound by a quirk of fate early in their lives: the former is left motherless by domestic violence, the latter by abandonment. Set against the realities of the American South in the mid-20th century, among other things, the novel is the story of two cradle sisters by accident, kin by choice.
Jones grips you from the opening lines — “My first word was mother. Not ma-ma like other babbling babies. I said the word out loud and with texture. MOTHER.” — and never really lets go.
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