An intelligently executed love letter to Black female empowerment and the world of rock music.
A fictional history of a 1970s Black rock singer with a complicated past.
Sunny has just been named the new editor-in-chief of the storied music magazine Aural—the first Black person and woman to hold the position—when a scoop falls into her lap. It’s 2015, and Opal Jewel, “the ebony-skinned provocateur, the fashion rebel, the singer/screecher/Afro-Punk ancestor,” is contemplating a reunion tour with her old musical partner, Nev Charles, an Englishman who’s since embarked on a successful solo career; Opal herself hasn’t performed live in more than 25 years. Sunny begins writing a book—this book, an oral history of Opal and Nev’s brief but iconic collaboration during the early '70s—and focuses particularly on the disastrous 1971 concert in which a racist mob kills Opal and Nev’s drummer, a Black man named Jimmy Curtis. Sunny’s interest in the story is more than merely professional: Curtis, she discloses in an "Editor’s Note" at the very beginning of the book, was her father—and Opal his mistress while Sunny’s mother was married to Curtis and pregnant with her. Nevertheless, the first section of the book bears all the hallmarks of a rigorously reported work of journalism. Sunny interviews everyone from the label’s receptionist to Opal’s stylist and stitches together quotes to form a multifaceted narrative of Opal and Nev’s rise. But as Sunny reconstructs the events leading up to her father’s death, she hears something that changes the story she thought she knew—and forces her to shed her protective, professional shell. Debut author Walton wields the oral history form with easy skill, using its suggestion of conversation and potential for humor to give her characters personality. “But also Virgil sold reefer. Everybody loves the reefer man,” Sunny quotes Opal saying about her stylist. Immediately after: “VIRGIL LAFLEUR: I styled ladies’ hair. That’s how I paid my bills. I don’t know what she’s told you.” And the author adeptly captures the particular tenor of discussions of race in the early '70s (Opal’s destruction of a Confederate flag sets off the fateful riot) and in the age of memes: The creator of one Opal GIF, Sunny muses, “understood the culture and the language and this current moment of Black exasperation, and was nodding to the eerie relevance of Opal Jewel in them.”
An intelligently executed love letter to Black female empowerment and the world of rock music.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982140-16-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
