I wanted to love this book!...but I couldn't. I love Southern fiction and African-American fiction, and while I thoroughly enjoyed the first third or so of this novel, it seemed to unravel into a disjointed collection of platitudes; where I was expecting poignant revelation, the story fell flat. Such interesting themes--racism, sexuality, and religion--are simply not explored to the level of promise of the beginning of the book. Neither is the story rescued by the charm of the South. Finally, and sadly, the kindle edition is riddled with typos, from stray apostrophes and quotation marks to words like "every" instead of "ever," and these were not verbiage and voice choices made by the author.
In short, it's an OK book if you only spend six bucks for the kindle version, but I would recommend "The Help," "Rush Home Road," "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," or "The Year of Jubilo" instead.
Musings
And I feel like we’ve missed the chance to learn some profound truth, that we’ve turned away from some universal doorway that led to a better place. Everybody wants to get back to “normal,” and I can’t shake the feeling that “normal” just ain’t that great.
Musings
It seems unlikely that anyone would thrive in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, and yet here I sit, and here I grow, a lot like that pesky weed that keeps cropping up in the crack in the sidewalk. In the most odd environment, life is present.
Blog
Death is an incontrovertible part of life.
Why do we struggle so? What is it about this final veil--the veil which separates forever the living from the dead--that causes us to beat our flying fists against it so firmly, so resolute with no result? If death is a part of life, why does it hurt so much?
There is so much material online about the PULSE nightclub shooting on June 12, 2016. I can’t possibly do a better job of honoring the victims—both living and dead—of the massacre. But I can share with you the weight of it, the heft, the residual dread and anxiety, that this anniversary stirs up for someone who wasn’t there and didn’t know anyone who was hurt or killed.
But I know a lot of people who do. And I watched with them as the day unfolded and the horror became known and real.
