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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
Told from multiple POV and across time, this slim novel packs a punch. I love how the author just drops you into a scene already in progress and the story spiderwebs out from there, with select scenes across four generations brought to vivid life. All of these separate narratives weave and intertwine to form a distinct portrait of a family that is disjointed, sad, loving, and all they have.
The way Jacqueline Woodson constructs this narrative is like placing brick upon bricks, and when you step back you see a palace. I devoured this book.
dark
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A moving story about family trauma and legacy, centering around a teen pregnancy. It had me thinking about the ways our ancestors' lives and traumas can impact our own, & how our own lives can change in an instant.
Beautiful human prose fills this shifting personal journey through a families memories. It is a story of hardship, judgment, racism and the ability to rise. I am so impressed by the fullness of the voices within this story and how clear each character love, hope and resentment is. I particularly loved Sabe and Po’Boy, it takes such immense skill to craft whole and long lives in such a small space.
This is a story of mothering and being mothered, of poverty and accepting help, it is a story of small cruelties and big loves and needing each other. It is how mothers fail us and shape us and how nothing can be feel like so many different things. A wonderful reading experience that I regret not taking more time to savour.
This is a story of mothering and being mothered, of poverty and accepting help, it is a story of small cruelties and big loves and needing each other. It is how mothers fail us and shape us and how nothing can be feel like so many different things. A wonderful reading experience that I regret not taking more time to savour.
I love the first sentence of this book: "But that afternoon there was an orchestra playing." The conversational tone of a story being told to me lasted throughout this short novel. The author did a beautiful job of telling the stories of many people in just under 200 pages and I felt that I had a fairly good understanding of each of those characters. Each of them were memorable, and even though I finished the book a couple of days ago, I find myself thinking about Aubrey, Po'Boy, Sabe, Iris, CathyMarie, and Melody. I like a story that can get in your mind and stick around for awhile.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
First book I've read by Woodson but it won't be the last. POWERFUL storytelling.
I picked this book up, couldn’t get into it, and then revisited it again months later and am SO GLAD I gave it another chance. The writing was phenomenal, as were the stories told, woven between multiple characters and time periods.
This slim not-exactly-a-novel sketches the lives of an African-American family transitioning with society from roots in the Tulsa Massacre to middle-class prosperity in Brooklyn. Woodson writes in the voices of a sixteen-year-old girl coming out in society, as well as the voice of each of her parents and three of her grandparents, moving back and forth in their lives mostly through memories. The debutante, Melody, is loved and cosseted by her prosperous-against-the-odds family, but her start was tough: mother Iris was a teen mother who stayed long enough to get her high school degree and then fled to Oberlin College to move on with her life, while dad Aubrey stays with his daughter in Iris’s parents’ house, working a blue-collar job in a banking concern. Each of the characters struggles with identity and belonging within their family and with the social scars of racism. Ultimately, Woodson’s choice to spend so little time with any one character, or even to characters emotionally (they tell their emotions in memory, but do little direct interaction), had me reading this book as if touring Woodson’s touchstone experiences but either the characters are too close to her own life for her to be able to provide a complete story, or they are too much Types to be deeply thought through.
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated