The other side of Atlanta from Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full is explored in Bambara’s powerful last testament—the book she worked on for 12 years before her death in 1995. As before, Bambara (The Salt Eaters, 1980, etc.) tells a dramatic story that’s also an accusatory critique of the relegation of American blacks to second-class citizenship. The focus here is initially on Marzala (—Zala—) Spencer, a single mother who’s heroically raising three children, working three jobs, and attending night school; coping, somehow—until her 12-year-old Sundiata (—Sunny—) fails to come home from a camping trip. Zala’s frantic search for Sonny’seemingly another victim of Atlanta’s “child murders” in the early 1980s—rapidly introduces her to a world of violent crime and predatory sexuality, and to a parallel “murky world of disconnected information.” The search reunites her with her estranged husband Spence (a Vietnam vet, now a limo driver) and transforms the couple’s experience into an impressive anatomy of black and white—and black vs. white—Atlanta. Though the drama seldom flags, it must be admitted that Bambara frequently lectures the reader. Nevertheless, Zala and Spence (whose wounded, indignant psyches are analyzed with extraordinary intensity) are vibrantly real. And the climactic actions—including Zala’s meeting with a traumatized Sonny so changed she can—t be sure he’s her son (a scene that explains Bambara’s superb title); the judgment pronounced by her long-suffering “Mama Lovey” (—You so scarce in understanding, you think you can get past your own flesh and blood—); and a concluding (and very moving) sermon and response—carry a conviction that triumphantly raises the whole above its intermittent discursiveness and overstatement. Bambara’s uncompleted manuscript was edited for publication by Toni Morrison, whose Editor’s Note (not seen) will presumably clarify whether the author would have further refined the novel’s remaining rough edges. But it’s a masterwork in any case: as replete a revelation of urban black life as American fiction has seen.
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-44261-8
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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