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A review by zoolmcg
Those Bones Are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
I had this book on my TBR for the longest time before picking it up. The cover and the blurb and the title all drew me in, and I thought it’d be a perfect research read for my own novel. What I discovered with this read was a painfully tedious slog that I can’t ever see myself returning to.
I must mention first and foremost that I wasn’t aware of it’s posthumous publication until I was well into the book. That at first struck me as sweet, as Toni Morrison (who ‘edited’ it) was also featured on the cover with a quote. Then I got over 250 pages in and I quickly came to realise that this was not in fact a finished novel, but merely a preserved manuscript - and one at 669 pages at that. The entirety of this book needed a thorough comb over and culling in the editing stage, but I’m assuming due to Morrison’s affiliation with Bambara, this was avoided for the sake of maintaining a certain artistic license. What we as readers are left with is a dense and description heavy middle section that detracts from the real horrors and tension of the story. I saw another review reflect on how she gives as much descriptive weight to a single meal as she does to some of the most horrific and tense moments of the book, and it’s true. It’s hard to give certain scenes more weight when they’re all given an equal amount of tedious detail.
Onto some more positives, there were moments of dialogue and family dynamics that really stood out to me as excellent. Almost every scene of Zala and Spence together were great to read, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting a feel of their mental states through conversation. The last section that did this for me what Zala’s confrontation with her children towards the end about the landlord/roofing men being let in the house, which exemplified the trauma responses and anxiety towards strangers and her kids since Sonny’s disappearance.
I have to say that most of this book was a skim for me, otherwise I absolutely would not have finished it. It’s a shame because it seems like it had the potential to be such an impactful novel - a magnum opus as Morrison herself said. It fell so unbearably flat for me, and it’s a shame to have to admit when a piece of literature is so boring and unreadable that I found myself asking who certain characters were/what they were talking about, but lacking any curiosity whatsoever to go back a page or two to catch up. It sapped any interest out of me and I disliked it intensely.
I cannot in good conscious recommend this book at all. It’s too long, too descriptive, too unedited and far too aimless to enjoy in the slightest. I don’t want to write off Bambara as a creator completely, and down the line I may look at her pieces published while she was still alive, but this one is certainly a book to avoid wasting time with.
I must mention first and foremost that I wasn’t aware of it’s posthumous publication until I was well into the book. That at first struck me as sweet, as Toni Morrison (who ‘edited’ it) was also featured on the cover with a quote. Then I got over 250 pages in and I quickly came to realise that this was not in fact a finished novel, but merely a preserved manuscript - and one at 669 pages at that. The entirety of this book needed a thorough comb over and culling in the editing stage, but I’m assuming due to Morrison’s affiliation with Bambara, this was avoided for the sake of maintaining a certain artistic license. What we as readers are left with is a dense and description heavy middle section that detracts from the real horrors and tension of the story. I saw another review reflect on how she gives as much descriptive weight to a single meal as she does to some of the most horrific and tense moments of the book, and it’s true. It’s hard to give certain scenes more weight when they’re all given an equal amount of tedious detail.
Onto some more positives, there were moments of dialogue and family dynamics that really stood out to me as excellent. Almost every scene of Zala and Spence together were great to read, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting a feel of their mental states through conversation. The last section that did this for me what Zala’s confrontation with her children towards the end about the landlord/roofing men being let in the house, which exemplified the trauma responses and anxiety towards strangers and her kids since Sonny’s disappearance.
I have to say that most of this book was a skim for me, otherwise I absolutely would not have finished it. It’s a shame because it seems like it had the potential to be such an impactful novel - a magnum opus as Morrison herself said. It fell so unbearably flat for me, and it’s a shame to have to admit when a piece of literature is so boring and unreadable that I found myself asking who certain characters were/what they were talking about, but lacking any curiosity whatsoever to go back a page or two to catch up. It sapped any interest out of me and I disliked it intensely.
I cannot in good conscious recommend this book at all. It’s too long, too descriptive, too unedited and far too aimless to enjoy in the slightest. I don’t want to write off Bambara as a creator completely, and down the line I may look at her pieces published while she was still alive, but this one is certainly a book to avoid wasting time with.