An earnest tale that explores the frictions of black-white romantic relationships.
A social novel tells the story of an interracial liaison disrupted by questionable criminal charges.
Sidonie Frame and Chris Hawkins are not the most obvious couple—she’s a white, suburban-raised manager of one of Chicago’s hottest music venues; he’s a black sound engineer from the South Side. But when Sidonie hires Chris sight unseen for a one-night event, they unexpectedly hit it off. The chemistry is real and intense, but is it a good idea? “This is crazy,” thinks Chris. “What am I thinking? This could jeopardize the job. Complicating my life right now is not a smart move. She’s so beautiful.…Is it the best idea to get involved with a white woman…and my boss?” They end up hooking up and then dating, but as they attempt to settle into the rhythms of each other’s lives, they discover that there is a learning curve to interracial dating. Neither of their families is completely accepting, and both partners are forced to reckon with their own pre-conceived notions of the other’s race. Sidonie, in particular, is compelled to recognize for the first time the prejudice that Chris routinely faces and her own white privileges. It isn’t always easy, especially during a series of uncomfortable encounters with the police that threaten to disrupt the balance of their relationship. This culminates in Chris being implicated in a rape case, forcing Sidonie to decide what she truly believes—and whether the relationship is worth all the trouble. Wilke’s (Hysterical Love, 2015, etc.) prose is cautious and empathetic, probing at the edges of politeness, taboo, and uncomfortable truth, as when Sidonie’s mother reacts to the news of Chris’ race: “Well, I guess I had no idea that was something that appealed to you, Sidonie.” The book portrays only one—fairly conventional—interracial narrative and does so in what some might consider a heavy-handed fashion. But the directness and openness with which the author explores the topic as well as its continuing relevance make this a novel that will still read as daring to many.
An earnest tale that explores the frictions of black-white romantic relationships.Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-559-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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