An engaging story about a brilliant woman who risks everything.
In this fictionalization of a true story, a young Black woman named Belle da Costa Green passes for White and rises to become the first director of J.P. Morgan’s library.
In this extensively researched historical novel, we see Belle from the time she’s a young woman born Belle Greener, daughter of the first Black man to graduate from Harvard. After he abandons his family, Belle makes a pact with her mother and siblings to change their surname and pass for White. They swear secrecy. None will have children, for fear of being found out: “Six irrevocably intertwined fates, and if any one of them were to fall short, it would bring the others down with it.” Brilliant, bookish, and unsentimental, Belle gets a job at the Princeton library, where she meets Junius Spencer Morgan and eventually finds her way to his uncle J.P., who’s looking for someone to oversee his new project. Belle’s literary expertise helps her secure Morgan’s trust, and he rewards her with the responsibility of shaping the library’s collection. Belle closes herself off to thoughts of her heritage or her former life. Her focus on success remains singular. Morgan is mercurial and possessive. Belle is formidable. She’s torn by twin feelings: “the intoxication of feeling herself to be free, and the frustration of having to submit to the tyranny of her master.” Eventually, Morgan sends her to Europe to bid on items at auction; the library is entirely hers to shape. Yet she’s aware at all times that she has “a career based entirely on the protection of an individual more rich and powerful than [herself].” Tension builds as Belle tries to avoid losing the career that supports her family. As she tries to outbid the other collectors of the day in a new world that’s full of wealth and eager to grab up the world’s treasures, she presents a carefully shaped persona. She adopts a new background because she believes it’s the only way to succeed in a broken system. Passing for White puts Belle’s life at risk every day. She’s consumed by the library and her secret; scenes with her real-life historical counterparts are fleshed out with dialogue drawn from primary sources such as letters. Occasionally these conversations feel stilted, but Belle's story is so exceptional that readers won’t mind.
An engaging story about a brilliant woman who risks everything.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60945-758-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
A somewhat ridiculous novel, nicely marbled with fine food and travel writing.
A stiff, lonely young woman takes a life-changing trip to Paris.
After suffering a miserable childhood at the hands of her narcissistic mother, Stella St. Vincent is surprised to receive an envelope labeled “For My Daughter” after Celia’s death in 1983. In it is a piece of paper that says “Go to Paris”; the money to pay for the trip will only be released after it’s booked. This is just the beginning of a silly story with a wildly overcaffeinated plot and characters that are not even close to real people, foremost among them an annoying protagonist who can’t stop shooting herself in the foot even as she miraculously finds her tribe and discovers her extraordinary gifts for eating and cooking. Though she lacks the instincts of a fiction writer, Reichl fills her second novel with the high-flying writing about food, wine, places, and clothes that have made her nonfiction work a well-deserved success. In fact, according to an author’s note, this book grew out of her editor’s request that she expand a chapter from her memoir about trying on a little black dress in Paris. Unfortunately, a few too many ingredients have been added, including a search for a forgotten 19th-century woman painter; appearances by culinary figures like Marc Meneau and Jean Troisgros and literary figures like John Ashbery, James Baldwin, and Allen Ginsberg; a nasty Mr. Darcy–style love interest; and the search for Stella’s father, whom she either does or doesn’t want to find depending on the page. But the food writing is almost worth the price of admission, ranging from the horrific to the euphoric. Here’s Stella eating ortolans, whole baby birds: “All her senses were concentrated in her mouth as her teeth crashed down again and again. She felt the skull crackle and tasted what must be brain. It was hot, it was primitive. It was exciting.”
A somewhat ridiculous novel, nicely marbled with fine food and travel writing.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780812996302
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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