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A review by happyeverabigail
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
4.75
Thank you to PRHAudio for the complimentary audiobook. The narration is great! There’s kind of a transatlantic vibe that felt like it fit the time period.
This was a slice of life kind of storytelling and I loved the cohesive way topics like who gets to tell whose story were told throughout the whole book. Current events are happening and reported on but it’s more about Jessie at and around the top levels of the magazine where she works and the NAACP, the challenges of the publishing industry, and her personal growth as a writer.
This is fictional while based on real people. The choice of the affair makes sense to me. In real life she chose career over love so having an affair during a time where a man was absolutely not going to divorce his wife seemed like a realistic boundary for her to set when having a romantic partner. There was a lot of nuance to that relationship. WEB was misogynistic at times, other times loving. And for the two of them, heroes can be messy. Prominent people of the time period were not perfect people. I honestly think this book would’ve been way more boring without that emotional element and with little documented history to go off of I understand why the author went the way she did.
I highly recommend reading this via audio specifically!! Really enjoyed.
This was a slice of life kind of storytelling and I loved the cohesive way topics like who gets to tell whose story were told throughout the whole book. Current events are happening and reported on but it’s more about Jessie at and around the top levels of the magazine where she works and the NAACP, the challenges of the publishing industry, and her personal growth as a writer.
This is fictional while based on real people. The choice of the affair makes sense to me. In real life she chose career over love so having an affair during a time where a man was absolutely not going to divorce his wife seemed like a realistic boundary for her to set when having a romantic partner. There was a lot of nuance to that relationship. WEB was misogynistic at times, other times loving. And for the two of them, heroes can be messy. Prominent people of the time period were not perfect people. I honestly think this book would’ve been way more boring without that emotional element and with little documented history to go off of I understand why the author went the way she did.
I highly recommend reading this via audio specifically!! Really enjoyed.