The Underground Railroad
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Is it true that Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad “traces the terrible wounds of slavery,” as Michael Schaub wrote in his NPR review of the novel? That sentence, more than one-hundred-and-fifty years post-Civil War and Emancipation, seems lamely inadequate to me. I don’t believe this book is yet another novel […]
Homegoing – Three hundred years of family ties
HOMEGOING — Retrieval of family ties Not since Alex Haley’s Roots have I been so taken by a novel with characters spanning more than three hundred years of family ties. Homegoing is not to be missed. It has taken me some time to put into words why this story of two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, […]
Home
HOME — MORE THAN A HOUSE OR THE PLACE YOU COME FROM “Home” is rather like a jigsaw puzzle (another of my favorite pastimes). It is a short novel, not 150 pages and when first read it seems very straightforward. Frank Money returns stateside from the war in Korea. He enlisted in the army to […]
Mudbound
MUDBOUND Hillary Jordan’s novel, Mudbound, carries the reader back to a 1940s Mississippi rife with hatred, prejudice, and bigotry. Since the first chapter opens with a burial, the reader knows the novel won’t end well, but only discovers the details of the racial conflict as the narrative unfolds. Through the voices of six divergent narrators, […]
The Help
THE HELP Kathryn Stockett‘s debut novel, The Help, is so popular (my recently purchased copy was a seventh edition of the paperback) that another positive review seems like a new high in redundancy. Nevertheless, I offer it to all of you readers who prefer to avoid the rush, or those of you who simply read […]