Remarkable for its very ambiguities, this stylistically daring novel steers wide of the literature of oppression and uplift,...
First-novelist Kenan conjures up a modern book of revelations, full of spirits seen and unseen, past and present, who haunt a few young inhabitants of Tims Creek, a black community built among the pine trees and tobacco fields of backwoods North Carolina.
Sixteen-year-old Horace Cross and his cousin, James Malachai Greene, a preacher and high-school principal in his late 30s, feel the burden of their family's history weighing heavily upon them. The Crosses, mostly ministers and teachers ever since emancipation, adhere to conservative standards of behavior derived from their religious orthodoxy. But Horace, in particular, is a child of his time. An excellent student and a voracious reader of everything from Melville to Marvel comics, he turns to the occult as a way of escaping the painful truth about himself. An "apprentice sorcerer" about to become a "true mystic," he taps into the dark side of the world "preached to him from the cradle on"––a realm full of "archangels and prophets and folk rising from the dead." Whether he's in fact possessed by "a ghost of the mind or a spirit of the nether world" ultimately doesn't matter––for what results is a long nightmare of the soul, a jumble of disjointed memories, from his baptism to getting his ear pierced. And underlying all his remembered traumas is the unalterable fact of his homosexuality, an unthinkable abomination among his righteous kin. As modern a religious thinker as James is––well-educated, married to a radical northerner––he dismisses Horace's panic as a phase from which he'll recover. But when Horace's night of manic wanderings ends in tragedy, James begins his own soul-searching: Why did he ever return to Tims Creek? Why does he stay once his young wife dies from cancer? Why do the dynastic hopes and "the will of a few dead folks" exercise such power over this child of the New South? As much as family can engender sorrow and despair, it is also proves here to be a source of faith and joy, emanating from the spirits of community.
Remarkable for its very ambiguities, this stylistically daring novel steers wide of the literature of oppression and uplift, and shares even less with tales of coming-out, in short, an original.Pub Date: July 1, 1989
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1118-0
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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