bookshelf

A VOICE LONG GONE

Name: A VOICE LONG GONE
Author: Doris Spears
ISBN: 978-1465348340

A NOVEL ALLEGORY

by Doris Spears ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 2011

bookshelf

Spears’ novel speaks to the most distressing concerns of contemporary African-American life.

The book is an exploration of the personal, economic and familial trials of Tequila Victorious, a multiple rape survivor from an acrimonious home; her children, Alizay and R&B; and their father, Lightnin. When the novel opens, Tequila is an aspiring singer leveraging sexual favors for a break, and the stars in her eyes match Lightnin’s, a lothario with vague ambitions. After a shooting and an arson attack force them from their home in Promise, a predominately prosperous neighborhood in a Chicago-analogue town in the Midwest, Tequila relocates her family to Bling City, something like New York, where most of the story takes place. In Bling City, Tequila’s arc diverges from Lightnin’s; she works several jobs, supports the endeavors of her children and sings on the side, while her partner—later husband—seems hardwired for drinking, cheating and, occasionally, domestic abuse. Discord increases with Lightnin’s jealousy over their son R&B’s budding entertainment career, and industrious, scholastic Alizay faces challenges of her own. Allegory and unfiltered realism blur in Spears’ story, which attempts to illuminate the contemporary African-American social and political condition while providing psychological diagnoses of individuals and families struggling with subsistence-level earnings. The book is written in an Ebonicslike slang and narrated by an aunt of Tequila’s who is conspicuously absent from the plot. The dialect breathes life into the characters but also blocks the narrative; the action of the book is turbulent and it’s difficult to interpret the minutiae of a character’s psychology as written, especially when characterization is entwined with a broader social argument. Spears’ book is graphic, unsparing and unapologetic, and strongest when it drops the allegory and gets personal, particularly in the case of Tequila when, in rare moments when the prose is analytically unencumbered, her earnest reflection is moving and poetic. But even Tequila, though a sympathetic character, holds views that are at best culturally insensitive, and at worst ethnocentric and damaging. A niche book for readers with thick skin.

Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2011

ISBN: 978-1465348340

Page Count: 225

Publisher: Xlibris

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

bookshelf

Awards & Accolades

Likes

616

Our Verdict

GET IT

New York Times Bestseller

DEVOLUTION

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

bookshelf

Awards & Accolades

Likes

616

Our Verdict

GET IT

New York Times Bestseller

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.