A novel that offers an original, compelling facet of the African-American female experience.
In Tewogbade’s debut novel, Garnett, an African-American woman, immigrates with her husband to his home in Nigeria and struggles with the values of a tribal society.
Garnett was raised by her grandmother in a Brooklyn, N.Y., housing project, and at first glance, her pampered life as the wife of Kayode, a Nigerian banker, seems like a success story. However, her domestic life becomes unsettled when she doesn’t become pregnant. As a result, she faces her husband’s disappointment; her meddling mother-in-law also disapproves and reminds Garnett that she’s “a wife of this family not just my son.” Other dark clouds hover, as well; her husband’s sketchy financial dealings and infidelities add to her teetering self-worth and fear of losing him to a “junior wife.” It may be hard for readers to stomach the low expectations that Garnett has for her marriage, but the author paints the character’s complexities and dichotomies honestly and realistically. Garnett excels in her work as a clothing boutique owner and displays inner strength, but she also feels that her present reality may one day be stolen away—and in the end, she’s right. She eventually stands up to her husband but at a great cost; when Kayode forbids Garnett from leaving the country, she draws on the survival methods of her childhood to quickly develop a plan. Tewogbade portrays Nigerian culture and Garnett’s daily life in flowery, metaphorical prose, and at times, the narrative overuses foreshadowing, which often deflates the tension. That said, Tewogbade provides a rare window into how women live in a society where they’re considered the property of their husbands. It’s refreshing to see even a fictional story of an African-American woman’s experience in Africa; many of Garnett’s Brooklyn friends romanticize the continent as the motherland, but she discovers that it brings her none of the comforts of home.
A novel that offers an original, compelling facet of the African-American female experience.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491094181
Page Count: 252
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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