No matter a person’s ethnic or cultural background, this book is relatable.
Lester’s (Black, White, Other, 2011, etc.) poignant narrative probes the relationship between a mother and her biracial daughter.
Young Lizzie O’Leary is a starry-eyed idealist who drops out of college in 1963 and heads to Greenwood, Miss., to become a civil rights volunteer. When she meets and falls in love with Solomon Jordan, an African-American musician and recent college graduate, they move to San Francisco. Fifteen years later, their biracial marriage has produced two children, Ruby and Che, who’ve been raised to identify with their black heritage. Lizzie spouts the doctrine and attends the rallies—whenever Solomon doesn’t try to keep her hidden away from his Black Panther colleagues—but her white skin and flaming red hair brand her as an outsider. However, Lizzie’s an activist who’s adopted feminist beliefs as well, and she’s angry that Solomon spends so much time outside the home while she’s expected to raise the children and care for the house. Their constant arguments lead to divorce, and when Lizzie and Solomon split up, Che goes to live with his father, and Ruby’s forced to stay with her mother. An angry young teenager, Ruby resents Lizzie both for what she perceives her to be (self-absorbed and racist) and what she knows she cannot be (someone who can empathize with her feelings as a person with a culturally diverse background). Contributing to the frayed relationship is the fact that Lizzie attacks her mothering role with vigor while also going to the opposite extreme. She recruits a biracial woman to mentor Ruby and then has an affair with her. Lizzie tries to engage Ruby in mother–daughter time by cultivating a garden, but she forgets to pick her up after hockey practice. She encourages her daughter to become self-sufficient by refusing to cook but insists on hiring a baby sitter for Ruby on the evenings she works late. The struggle to heal the rift between the two is both complex and emotional. Lester writes well about a subject familiar to her: She’s a member of a biracial family, and her previous book, geared toward young adults, addresses the same issue.
No matter a person’s ethnic or cultural background, this book is relatable.Pub Date: May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9318-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
In this new novella by the Nobel Prize-winner, a Colombian-village murder 20 years in the past is raked over, brooded upon, made into a parable: how an Arab living in the town was assassinated by the loutish twin Vicario brothers when their sister, a new bride, was rejected by her bridegroom—who discovered the girl's unchastity. Cast off, beaten, grilled, the girl eventually revealed the name of her corrupter—Santiago Nassar. And, though no one really believed her (Nassar was the least likely villain), the Arab was indeed killed: the drunken brothers broadcasted their intentions casually; they went so far as to sharpen their murder weapons—old pig-sticking knives—in the town market; and the town, universal witness to the intention, reacted with epic ambivalence—sure, at first, that such an injustice couldn't occur, yet also resigned to its inevitability. As in In Evil Hour (1979) and other works, then, what Garcia Marquez offers here is an orchestration of grim social realities—an awareness that seems vague at first, then coheres into a solid, pessimistic vision. But, while In Evil Hour threaded the message with wit, fanciful imagination, and storytelling flair (the traits which have made Garcia Marquez popular as well as honored), this new book seems crammed, airless, thinly diagrammatic. The theme of historical imperative comes across in a didactic, mechanistic fashion: "He never thought it legitimate," G-M says of one character, ironically, "that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature, so there should be the untramelled fulfillment of a death so clearly foretold." (Also, the novella's structural lines are uncomfortably close to those of Robert Pinget's Libera Me Domine.) So, while the recent Nobel publicity will no doubt generate added interest, this is minor, lesser Garcia Marquez: characteristic themes illustrated without the often-characteristic charm and dazzle.
Pub Date: April 15, 1983
ISBN: 140003471X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Powerfully affecting and disturbing.
A young man dying of AIDS returns to his Ohio hometown, where people think homosexuality is a sin and the disease is divine punishment.
Brian left Chester when he was 18, seeking freedom to be who he was in New York City. Now, in 1986, he’s 24, his partner and virtually all of their friends are dead, and he’s moving into the disease’s late stages. “He turned his back on his family to live a life of sin and he’s sick because of it,” thinks his mother, Sharon; nonetheless she says yes when Brian asks if he can come home after years of estrangement. His father, Travis, insists they must keep Brian’s illness and sexuality a secret; he makes Sharon set aside tableware and bedclothes exclusively for their son and wash them separately wearing gloves. Sickels (The Evening Hour, 2012) doesn’t gloss over the shame Brian’s family feels nor the astonishing cruelty of their friends and neighbors when word gets out. Brian’s ejection from the local swimming pool is the first in a series of increasingly ugly incidents: vicious phone calls, hate mail to the local newspapers, graffiti on the family garage, a gunshot through the windshield of his father’s car. Grandmother Lettie is Brian’s only open defender, refusing to speak to friends who ostracize him and boycotting the diner that denied him service. Younger sister Jess, taunted at school, wishes he’d never come home and tells him so. This unvarnished portrait of what people are capable of when gripped by ignorance and fear is relieved slightly by a few cracks in the facade of the town’s intolerance, some moments of kindness or at least faint regret as Brian’s health worsens over the summer and fall. Sharon and Travis both eventually acknowledge they have failed their son; she makes some amends while he can only grieve. Sickels’ characters are painfully flawed and wholly, believably human in their failings. This unflinching honesty, conveyed in finely crafted prose, makes for a memorable and unsettling novel.
Powerfully affecting and disturbing.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-938235-62-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hub City Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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