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A review by readbyryan
The Living is Easy by Dorothy West
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.▪️
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.▪️