Assured and engrossing tale of survival and forgiveness.
A displaced African-American woman and her estranged mother rediscover their heritage and each other en route to a family reunion in rural Georgia.
With a fine new man and baby on the way, free spirit Sherry feels her life is finally on track, but she also realizes she cannot move forward without facing certain events from her past, including an inexplicable moment of violence in her childhood that distanced her from her mother Clementine “Dumpling” Jackson. With reconciliation and resolution on her mind, Sherry convinces her mother to drive with her to their ancestral home of Sandersville, Ga., to attend a family reunion. Along the way, Sherry questions her mother about their shared ancestry in the hopes of writing a family history. The story then shifts to Sherry's imagined version of that history, beginning with her Yamasee Indian great-grandmother Lou, who was abducted in childhood and sold into slavery. The resilient Lou has three children with fellow slave Buena Vista, all the while facing one harrowing experience after another. After the Civil War, and unaware that slavery has ended, Lou’s children Jeff and Suce take over their cotton plantation from their weakened master and participate in several brutal (and perhaps justifiable) acts that foreshadow much of the family’s tragedy for generations to come. Dealing with murder, rape and incest, this often grim tale is lightened considerably by a no-nonsense running commentary from the lovably flawed Dumpling, who thinks the past should be let go. Well paced, with excellent dialogue, Sherry’s story-within-a-story is sometimes hampered by southern gothic clichés.
Assured and engrossing tale of survival and forgiveness.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-94875-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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