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
The author gamely combines characters and caricatures, real pain and farce.
Can wearing the family dog in a baby sling save a troubled marriage?
“Wearing the dog is ridiculous. An act of desperation. I know this….But there is the loneliness. How I startle awake in the dark, panicked, full of dread, floating on the night sea on a tiny raft surrounded by all that vast blackness.” Once-successful author Judy Vogel is beset by problems. Her writing’s dried up, her 13-year-old son is pulling away from her, her best friend is dying of cancer, her marriage is falling apart due to her husband’s extreme anxiety issues, and hers don’t seem much less serious. As the book opens, Judy and Gary are technically separated but still living in the same house. He addresses his condition with a low-stress job and weed; she finds her solace in a never-used BabyBjörn that turns up in the basement. In goes the family sheltie!—and suddenly, somehow it all doesn’t seem so bad. Zigman (Piece of Work, 2006, etc.) is adept at Where’d You Go Bernadette–style snarkery about her son’s progressive Montessori school, her own job writing posts for a health and happiness website—“Are dogs the ultimate antidepressant?”; “If just seeing the word cannabis makes you anxious, keep reading”—and a New Age creativity retreat the couple attend. But the central premise of the novel is a bit unsettling. When Judy first puts the dog in the sling, she’s aware that it wants to get out. Soon she convinces herself it’s nice in there. From that point on she pays so little attention to the actual dog that it could be a stuffed animal. She almost doesn’t seem to care about it as a pet or as a sentient being with needs. When she’s attacked by a group of people at the dog park who charge her with animal abuse, you wonder whose side you're on.
The author gamely combines characters and caricatures, real pain and farce.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-290907-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
More predictable and less profound than her most recent full-scale work (the magical A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015), but...
After a lightweight foray into rewriting Shakespeare (Vinegar Girl, 2016, etc.), Tyler returns to her tried-and-true theme of family life’s emotionally charged complexities.
Eleven-year-old Willa Drake doesn’t really understand the fraught interchanges between her volatile mother and maddeningly mild-mannered father that roil the novel’s opening chapter, set in Pennsylvania in 1967. But as the action leapfrogs to 1977 and she impulsively decides to marry college boyfriend Derek after he stands up to her mother on their first meeting, we see that, in a world of self-dramatizers and placaters, Willa has unconsciously decided to be a placater. The chapter detailing Derek’s death in a California road-rage incident in 1997 suggests that Willa’s placatory pattern is firmly set, an impression buttressed as Part II begins with 61-year-old Willa now married to Peter, another man who patronizes her and expects her to cater to his every whim. But then comes a phone call from Baltimore, where her son’s ex-girlfriend Denise has been hospitalized with a broken leg after a mysterious shooting incident by a neighbor under the mistaken impression that Denise’s daughter is Willa’s granddaughter. This brazenly schematic setup for Willa’s late-life regeneration is redeemed by the fact that it’s utterly characteristic of our maddeningly mild-mannered heroine that she not only doesn’t correct the misunderstanding, but gets on a plane to Baltimore, with Peter in tow complaining all the way. Power dynamics are never simple in Tyler’s portraits of marriage, and when Willa needs to, she quietly gets what she wants. As she gets to know Denise’s prematurely mature daughter, Cheryl, and the array of eccentric folks on their slightly seedy block—all vibrantly portrayed with Tyler’s usual low-key gusto and bracingly dark humor—readers will want Willa to see that others appreciate her sly wit and tolerant acceptance of people’s foibles as whiny Peter does not. But will she? Tyler drags out the suspense a tad longer than the slight plot merits.
More predictable and less profound than her most recent full-scale work (the magical A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015), but Tyler’s characteristic warmth and affection for her characters are as engaging as ever.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52122-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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