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TRUTH IS IN THE HOUSE

A vividly drawn period piece about violence and race in America.

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Two kids living in the Bronx grow up in an era dominated by drugs, racial tension, and the Vietnam War in this novel.

Jaylen Jackson and his brother, Jamani, are swept out of the Jim Crow South by their mother, Tyra, after their father disappears. Jimmy O’Farrell’s father, Matthew, moves his family to New York City from Ireland, hoping to become part of America’s immigration legacy. Both Jaylen and Jimmy find a home in the Bronx, yet outside their passion for basketball, they have remarkably different experiences there and only cross paths on “The Courts.” Jimmy feels comfortable in the heavily Irish community, but after a violent gang attack takes a friend’s life, he is ill at ease around the Black and Hispanic families in New York’s melting pot. Jaylen, meanwhile, discovers that while the “Whites Only” signs of Mississippi are long gone, his skin color still matters, and he eventually leaves college to join the Marines, an institution that promises a life beyond such prejudice. But this is the 1960s, and the Vietnam War rages, and even for an accomplished soldier, there is no real equality to be unearthed in the Asian jungles. What he does find, surprisingly, is Jimmy, now a Marine himself and happy to see a familiar face from the Bronx. When both are wounded, a chance encounter on the USS Sanctuary gives Jaylen a blunt moment to peel back the racial facade that separates them, a revelation that will shape the two men’s decisions after returning home. Coffino employs an understandable language in the novel’s action scenes, particularly on the basketball court and with other team sports. Even Jimmy and his family’s listening to the 1960s World Series is exciting and high stakes. New York comes alive in the book, a place of great history and infinite possibility, with people of all races and creeds constantly in both cooperation and conflict. Vietnam is deftly captured as a carnal, violent place, and the only setting that comes up short in the story is its portrayal of Jim Crow Mississippi, its communities, perhaps rightfully, taking a back seat to its vile politics. Dreams, folklore, and Bible verses foreshadow events and outline characters’ anxieties, connecting them beyond race and through a shared culture and experiences.

A vividly drawn period piece about violence and race in America.

Pub Date: July 6, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-64663-350-0

Page Count: 366

Publisher: Koehler Books

Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2021

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THE WEDDING PEOPLE

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.

Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

Pub Date: July 30, 2024

ISBN: 9781250899576

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024

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THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND

A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.

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A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.

Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.

A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.

Pub Date: April 20, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Library of America

Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021

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