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A review by stevie_b
Tyrell by Coe Booth
3.0
Tyrell's father is in prison...again. Tyrell is doing his best to be the man of the family. At home he's working to keep his mother from completely falling apart, he has dropped out of school and is finding small ways to make a little money to keep them fed. All the while he is dreaming of the day when his girlfriend, Novisha, has finished high school and they can get married and move away together. When Tyrell and his family get placed in an especially rough hotel for a weekend Tyrell is forced to step up to make sure his family stays together. To do this, Tyrell has to come to terms with what risks he is willing to take.
Mature themes and language fill this realistic, and somewhat bleak, story. The writing style is casual and it was written in dialect. I really appreciate this book for being representative of poverty and the African American experience. I think it is important to illuminate to a younger audience how fighting to keep your family fed and in a house can get you entrenched in debt and in trouble with the law. This can either help to make an audience more empathetic to the struggles of their fellow man or allows less fortunate readers to see a comrade in Tyrell. Tyrell's character development was really well flushed out. His struggles with the difficulties of his relationship with both Novisha and Jasmine does help to illuminate him; but, in some ways, Novisha and Jasmine seem a little two dimensional.
Mature themes and language fill this realistic, and somewhat bleak, story. The writing style is casual and it was written in dialect. I really appreciate this book for being representative of poverty and the African American experience. I think it is important to illuminate to a younger audience how fighting to keep your family fed and in a house can get you entrenched in debt and in trouble with the law. This can either help to make an audience more empathetic to the struggles of their fellow man or allows less fortunate readers to see a comrade in Tyrell. Tyrell's character development was really well flushed out. His struggles with the difficulties of his relationship with both Novisha and Jasmine does help to illuminate him; but, in some ways, Novisha and Jasmine seem a little two dimensional.