GOODBYE, SWEETBERRY PARK

In Green’s satirical novel, a colorful Atlanta journalist covers a chaotic summer in his embattled neighborhood.

Archie Johnson is not God, though people call him that. The nickname has to do with his flowing silvery mane, long white beard, unplaceable ethnicity, and big personality. The freelance journalist writes primarily for the Atlanta Beacon, but he’s obliged to take any work he can find to keep his ancient home from falling apart. God inherited the Queen Anne–style house from his racist white grandfather, who allowed the property to fall into ruin after fleeing for the suburbs decades ago. That the house sits in the heart of the now predominantly Black neighborhood of Sweetberry Park is just a happy irony. God—a light-skinned man with one-quarter Nigerian ancestry—sees himself as both scribe and protector of Sweetberry Park, a role that has renewed his life’s purpose following the long-ago tragic death of his wife and young son. God has his work cut out for him in the summer of 2018 as the neighborhood is beset not only by a new project from millionaire developer Lawrence “Lotto” Livingston, but also by a literal plague of snakes—the 17 deadliest species available at the nearby zoo, released into the neighborhood by a deranged zookeeper. With the help of a former blues singer with deep roots in the neighborhood, can God save some of Atlanta’s history—and his own—from getting erased? Green’s voice-forward prose, as narrated by God, is inflected with enthusiasm and regret for what Atlanta was, is, and will become. He bemoans sitting in traffic on the “fifty-lane freeway monster of perpetual immobility, our city’s source of constant constipation,” remembering when he was a boy, when they “laughed at its unbridled fattening and the notion that people from exotic places like Jersey City, Portland, and Topeka would ever consider migrating to our baby metropolis.” Atlanta residents will get the most out of this hyperlocalized story, but the issues Green’s tale touches upon—housing, race, migration, grief, and the changing face of cities—are familiar all over.

A big-hearted consideration of gentrification and the erosion of time.