Jones beautifully evokes Atlanta in the 1980s while creating gritty, imperfect characters whose pain lingers in the reader’s...
In her third novel set in Atlanta, Jones (The Untelling, 2005, etc.) writes about two African-American half sisters, only one of whom knows that the other exists until their father’s double life starts to unravel.
When James Witherspoon, the owner of a successful limousine service, and Gwendolyn Yarboro have their marriage ceremony in 1969 four months after the birth of their baby Dana, Gwen knows that James already has a wife and an even younger baby. While James, who visits regularly if never often enough, and Gwen, a practical nurse, make sure Dana has every middle-class advantage, Dana grows up aware that her parents’ “marriage” is a secret and that she cannot openly claim her father; James’ devoted stepbrother Raleigh is listed on her birth certificate. Gwen and Dana habitually spy on James’ legitimate wife Laverne and daughter Chaurisse, who live in blissful ignorance of James’s bigamy. By adolescence, Dana, who attends a prestigious magnate high school and wants to attend Mount Holyoke, increasingly resents the plainer, less gifted Chaurisse, whose needs always seem to come first for James. After meeting Chaurisse by accident at a science fair, Dana finds ways for their paths to intersect. When she finally “befriends” Chaurisse, Chaurisse is thrilled that a popular girl likes her enough to visit her at home. Visits happen during hours Dana knows James will not be there. Dana’s adolescent plans, for acceptance as much as revenge, inevitably go awry, but this is less a tragedy than a case of survival and making do. While Dana is at the novel’s center, Jones gives both girls’ points of view, allowing readers to empathize with each of James’s families. Chaurisse may not know about Dana, but she is far from blissful in her ignorance, and her mother Laverne has endured more than her fair share of suffering. James is harder to fathom but also hard to hate.
Jones beautifully evokes Atlanta in the 1980s while creating gritty, imperfect characters whose pain lingers in the reader’s heart.Pub Date: May 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56512-990-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
This quirky, complex, and frustrating heroine will win hearts and challenge assumptions about family dysfunction and mental...
With the help of unusual houseguests, a teenage girl who tries to rebel by airing her family’s dirty laundry cleans up her act instead.
To Merit Voss, the white picket fence around her house is the only thing normal about the family it contains. She lives in a converted church with her father, stepmother, and siblings, and although her parents have been divorced for years, her mother still lives in the basement, struggling with social anxiety. No one in her family is religious, so her brother Utah updates the church marquee every day with fun facts instead of Bible verses. Merit is less accomplished than her identical twin sister, Honor, so she likes to buy used trophies to celebrate her failures. But Honor seems to have a fetish for terminally ill boys, so it’s a surprise to Merit when Sagan, who is perfectly healthy, kisses Merit after mistaking her for her sister—and then reveals that he’s living in their house. Soon they have another houseguest, Luck, whose connection to the family makes Merit even more convinced she’s living in a madhouse. So why is everyone so angry at her? Merit has a love/hate relationship with her sister. She's conflicted by her feelings for Sagan, who leaves intriguing sketches (illustrated by Adams) around the house for her to decipher. She’s simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by Luck, who annoys her with his questions but is also her confidant. She can’t sit through dinner without starting a fight; she’s been skipping school for days; and when she decides to give her whole family the silent treatment, Sagan is the only one who notices. In fact, he and Luck are the only people in the house who recognize Merit’s quirks for what they really are—cries for help. And when Merit takes drastic measures to be heard, the fallout is both worse and much better than she feared. Hoover (It Ends With Us, 2016, etc.) does an excellent job of revealing the subtle differences between healthy teenage rebellion and clinical depression, and Merit’s aha moment is worthy of every trophy in her collection.
This quirky, complex, and frustrating heroine will win hearts and challenge assumptions about family dysfunction and mental illness in a life-affirming story that redefines what’s normal.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7062-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
A warmhearted portrait of love embracing true hearts.
The Sweeney sisters gather in Southport, Connecticut, for the funeral of their father, Bill Sweeney, a brilliant writer. An unexpected guest at his wake, however, will shift the foundations of their lives.
Not yet lucky in love, all three sisters have nonetheless landed on their feet. Liza, the eldest, has lived a safe, comfortable life in her hometown, married to boring Whit Jones after Gray Cunningham broke her heart. But she’s created a successful career with her Sweeney Jones Gallery, selling work by local artisans, including Maggie, the middle Sweeney daughter, who has put years of wild living behind her. Tricia, the youngest, ended up in New York City, working for a prestigious law firm after her graduation from Yale. When their father’s lawyer reveals that a newly discovered half sister may lay claim to part of Bill’s estate, the sisters realize that the woman at the funeral was no stranger. In fact, she was their childhood neighbor Serena Tucker, whose mother turns out to have had an affair with Bill, which Serena learned about after having taken a DNA test. Dolan (Elizabeth the First Wife, 2013, etc.) uses her experience in podcasting with her own sisters (Satellite Sisters and The Chaos Chronicles) to craft believable women characters who worry about real problems and use wry humor to push through dark moments. Faced with irrefutable DNA evidence, the sisters gently remind each other not to blame Serena, yet they brim with questions: Why did Bill pair up with Birdie Tucker, Serena’s stiff, country-club fixture of a mother? Was their parents’ marriage troubled? And why didn’t Serena come forward sooner? Is she hoping to cash in on her famous father’s death? Or is she going to put her journalism career to work and write a tell-all memoir? Struggling to remember her own childhood from a new perspective, Serena is anxious about fitting in with the tight trio of redheads. As the sisters get to know each other, they begin to restructure their family to include not only each other, but also new partners.
A warmhearted portrait of love embracing true hearts.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-290904-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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