Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by realadhdoug
The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
4.25
I really loved this book in so many ways. Most significantly, the picture the writer paints of the environment the characters inhabit is so vivid that I felt like I was there. The sounds and the smells are described so brilliantly that I could almost smell them and hear them. Seriously, in terms of the writing quality alone, it’s some of the best I’ve read.
In addition to the writing, the way the plot unfolded kept interested and invested in what was happening with the main characters. It’s told from the perspective of two different Black woman living in the Philadelphia area around 1950. One is poor and ends up in a dire predicament in her efforts to better herself within the racist and classist structures she’s subjected to. The other is a middle class Black woman who marries into a wealthy Black family and finds herself facing a complicated task when she realizes she cannot bear children. The author weaves these two narratives together in a spectacular way, showing the struggles faced by Black women at various economic intersections in the 1950s.
The one issue I would take with the novel is that the conclusion felt anticlimactic and somewhat incomplete. There’s an epilogue that I sort of feel like should have been the conclusion, with an additional epilogue explaining what happened next. But I guess I get leaving it open-ended like this. It’s more realistic and probably takes more seriously the tenuous nature of family cohesion during the area in which it was written. Despite the ending leaving me a little unsatisfied, the story gave me a lot to think about and I am really glad I read it. Highly recommend!
In addition to the writing, the way the plot unfolded kept interested and invested in what was happening with the main characters. It’s told from the perspective of two different Black woman living in the Philadelphia area around 1950. One is poor and ends up in a dire predicament in her efforts to better herself within the racist and classist structures she’s subjected to. The other is a middle class Black woman who marries into a wealthy Black family and finds herself facing a complicated task when she realizes she cannot bear children. The author weaves these two narratives together in a spectacular way, showing the struggles faced by Black women at various economic intersections in the 1950s.
The one issue I would take with the novel is that the conclusion felt anticlimactic and somewhat incomplete. There’s an epilogue that I sort of feel like should have been the conclusion, with an additional epilogue explaining what happened next. But I guess I get leaving it open-ended like this. It’s more realistic and probably takes more seriously the tenuous nature of family cohesion during the area in which it was written. Despite the ending leaving me a little unsatisfied, the story gave me a lot to think about and I am really glad I read it. Highly recommend!