A heartening read for blues fans as well as anyone interested in the history of American music and civil rights.
In his debut novel, Brock weaves together two unexpectedly intertwined tales to illustrate the wide-reaching impact of the blues on American history.
Brock begins with the story of a young Charlie Patton and his family fleeing their Mississippi home in 1903 to escape racial persecution. Under the tutelage of a man named Henry, Charlie learned to play a harrowingly soulful form of music, coined “the blues.” Patton then devised a method of using rhythm as a tool for change, often altering political lyrics and subversively relying on the music to communicate his message. Of his guitar, Patton says, “This is a lock-pick to the back door of anybody’s home and soul.” At a time when blacks were not allowed as patrons in clubs, Charlie and his companions found their way through the door as musicians, reaching the ears and hearts of the masses. Patton recognized that those who wouldn’t listen to him speak for a minute would listen to his music for hours. Since many details of Patton’s life are widely disputed, it’s difficult to discern where the truth begins. Nevertheless, Brock’s story captures the essence of Patton’s character and his mission to revolutionize the South. Interwoven with Patton’s biography is the story of a young white man named Franklyn O’Connor, traveling in 2002 through the very same Southern land in search of his father. Instead, O’Connor meets an old black man who plays the blues and recounts his life story. It’s unclear if O’Connor is also based on a real person, but he serves as a witness to the old man’s retelling of the past and his continued experiences with racism in the 21st century. Chock-full of poignant passages and insightful dialogue about the deep, affecting power of music, the alternating narratives pass quickly right up until the end. Most chapters conclude with a cliffhanger, until a final cliffhanger indicates a sequel on the way.
A heartening read for blues fans as well as anyone interested in the history of American music and civil rights.Pub Date: April 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0991132027
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Bogie Road Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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