Reviews

The Living is Easy by Dorothy West

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sammisaysread's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

churameru's review

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

In THE LIVING IS EASY, Cleo is a mother and wife in Boston in 1914. The novel starts with a description of her early life and how she was sent north from Carolina where she met her husband, Bart. Cleo is ambitious and trying to move up in status and class. Her husband is the banana king of Boston who makes money from bananas ripened in underground chambers. Cleo negotiates moving into a ten story house on the other side of town, explaining to her husband they can rent the rooms to boarders. Soon, Cleo convinces her three sister and their children to leave their husbands and the south to move in with her.

This book was difficult for me to get into. I didn’t start appreciating the rhythm until Chapter 4 when the plot started picking up. Cleo is a type of anti-hero not common in literature. She’s a black woman during World War I. She doesn’t have many opportunities herself so she manipulates her husband, friends, neighbors, her child, to get what she wants. Cleo is obsessed with color, status, and class and will do almost anything to move up. This novel explores large themes of race, colorism, feminism, class. Cleo is not likable, but I wonder if this is only because she’s a black woman. If she were a white business man, would she just be resourceful? That’s the question the reader carries through this book.

This novel feels like a first novel to me, everything is thrown into this book (and maybe West didn’t think she’d get another shot. She didn’t publish another book until the 1990s.) I don’t think this novel was well written. The sentences are clunky. The paragraphs are structured in a way that do not build suspense. However, I like that Cleo is a full character with flaws and strengths. I am very happy I read this book and I recommend this because we don’t have many books by black women from this time. We picked this book for the Spilling Tea book club for Black History month. If you want to read with us, send me a DM.▪️

m_makayla_m's review against another edition

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5.0

I absolutely loved this book. It's heart breaking, and West did an incredible job at building up sympathy for these characters (even though Cleo is terrible), especially when there are so many to develop. It is beautifully written, and while Cleo disappoints time and time again, it is evident why she is the way she is. I truly love this book, even though it shattered my heart. In my opinion, a must read.

I think the ending was especially powerful, showing how Cleo's internalized racism and her desire to reach the high class of the white people ended in the destruction of herself and the ones around her. I'm still thinking about whether or not she truly loved anyone besides "loving" them for the benefits they gave her. For example, her love for Bart for protecting her, her love for her sisters for reminding her of home, and at the end, her "love" for Tim solely because she wants someone to love her most. It brought me to tears how she dragged everyone down for her desire to reach a higher status, ruining multiple people's lives. While Cleo is a terrible person, that does not detract from the meaning of this novel, but rather serves the meaning fully. It both shows the intense struggles of being black in America, especially in the early twentieth-century, as well as the downfalls of wanting to reach a higher status and doing whatever it takes to do so.

literarylady1's review

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challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

The Colored Bostonians. The singular sect of people were the driving force of this narrative & to the central character of Cloe, Ms. Judson. To maintain clout & status within this elite group, she is willing to risk it all no matter if costs family & friends. She moves people like chess pieces to maintain herself. However, her house of cards will soon fall.

Content Warnings

naitasia's review

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4.0

This one is going to sit with me for a while. I’m not so sure Boston then is different from Boston now.

haleypowell's review

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2.0

Sometimes brilliant authors can make characters so unlikeable that the book itself becomes insufferable. This is how I felt about Cleo Judson, the protagonist (and villain?) of The Living Is Easy. Anyone can tell Dorothy West is a fantastic writer, but our being so close to Cleo throughout almost all the narration-- the only relief we get is certain parts with The Duchess, but I did not admire even her-- made me so angry that I would have stopped reading if this wasn't for ENG460G. A lot of African-American literature is spotted with angering characters, but usually their circumstances explain some of this or allow for a larger discussion of society or human behavior. To put it into plain terms, Cleo's just a bitch through and through. Just when you think you might come to understand her, she goes a step further and does another unthinkable, horrible thing to someone she claims to care about.
Perhaps I'll read The Wedding, the more famous of West's two novels, but I do not see myself willingly returning to The Living Is Easy in my lifetime. I'm giving it two stars not out of necessary approval, but because West is a good enough writer to make me feel all this very real anger.