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A review by welkinvault
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
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? It's complicated
3.5
This multigenerational tome was chosen purely as it was recommended by a book youtuber I follow. I really wanted to like this, but it was though I was reading a different novel to them. I started with this 30 hour audio but after a few hours bought the book too as I thought it was my fault that I found huge chunks of the novel long, flat and two dimensional (even though the narration was very good).
The historical sections were interesting (although too much sexual violence reported almost in passing with little effort to show the impact on the survivors or the community). The more contemporary main storyline of the very immature, precocious, Ailey and her romances was lengthly and not engaging. As a coming of age story I found I was largely uninterested in her growth or her ridiculous reasonings for her prickly and almost combative realations with her school/undergraduate peers.
That is until about the 550 page mark when the book started to tie together all the threads, Ailey finally gained some maturity and the emotional resonance that was missing from the first chunk of the novel was delivered (especially in the historical scenes). At that point I found I could not put the book down.
The character of Root was fasciating, and I did want to know what happened to Nick, but for such a sprawling choppy work the author did a great job in tying up so many threads at the conclusion of the novel.
The historical sections were interesting (although too much sexual violence reported almost in passing with little effort to show the impact on the survivors or the community). The more contemporary main storyline of the very immature, precocious, Ailey and her romances was lengthly and not engaging. As a coming of age story I found I was largely uninterested in her growth or her ridiculous reasonings for her prickly and almost combative realations with her school/undergraduate peers.
That is until about the 550 page mark when the book started to tie together all the threads, Ailey finally gained some maturity and the emotional resonance that was missing from the first chunk of the novel was delivered (especially in the historical scenes). At that point I found I could not put the book down.
The character of Root was fasciating, and I did want to know what happened to Nick, but for such a sprawling choppy work the author did a great job in tying up so many threads at the conclusion of the novel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual violence, Child death, Colonisation, Incest, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Slavery, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, and Rape