An absorbing family saga provides a first-person account of Atlanta during the crucial civil rights era while also covering...
A columnist, copywriter, and graphic designer combines a coming-of-age novel and a memoir.
Josephine “Josie” Grace Flint, aka Jaybird, lives a fairly complacent existence in middle-class Atlanta in the 1960s. The eldest of three girls, she has two loving parents—her father, Cooper, a devoted Georgia Bulldog fan, and her charismatic mother, Beverly. Her paternal grandmother and namesake, Annie Jo, lives nearby, taking an active role in her granddaughters’ lives. Then a tragedy involving Josie’s father occurs on April Fools’ Day 1968, forever altering her family’s structure. As she and her sisters, mother, and grandmother reel from their personal loss, Atlanta endures its own heartbreak a mere three days later, when Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis. Chapters from Josie’s teenage years alternate with her adult confrontation with another misfortune—Annie Jo’s fatal stroke on April Fools’ Day 2003. Annie Jo’s death reunites Josie and her sisters, along with her extended family, which now includes her stepsister LaDarla Dalrymple. A shocking discovery in Annie Jo’s personal effects leads to the re-evaluation of the murder of Izzy Jackson—the son of the Dalrymple family’s black maid—in downtown Atlanta in 1969. Florence (You’ve Got a Wedgie, Cha Cha Cha, 2016), a longtime Atlanta resident, expertly captures the city in the ’60s, with its indoctrinated, inherent racism, challenged by some but supported by others. At one point, Josie watches a cat rescue tale on the TV news (“It struck me how the cat story got as much time and photos as the Negro man that was dragged behind a car and left for dead”). In addition, the author deftly explores the early influences of the sexual revolution, which hits a little too close to home in Josie’s case. Florence’s long career in journalism is evident in the flawless writing, but the pacing is a bit off. More attention could have been devoted to the murder mystery, which seems like an afterthought but is far more engrossing than the crafts and outfits orchestrated by Annie Jo that Florence chronicles. Nevertheless, the overarching theme of Josie’s complicated relationship with her father, particularly as the true circumstances of his death become known, transcends other story threads. Florence’s skillful portrayal of ’60s Atlanta elevates this novel to striking historical fiction.
An absorbing family saga provides a first-person account of Atlanta during the crucial civil rights era while also covering the early 21st century.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9986781-0-8
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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