I can’t imagine that I’ll read a more important book this year. The heightened tensions throughout the country following the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland and so many others (just so many) has made race perhaps the defining issue of our times. But it’s impossible to say this is surprising or new for anyone who’s been paying attention. What is going on now has been a continual flashpoint in our nation’s history; at times it’s been relegated to […]
An appeal to Americans to shake off the chains of economic injustice and complacency
This non-fiction contribution by the highly-respected African-American author addressing some of the many problems afflicting the United States today is a must-read. Written in 2000 in a presidential election year (but today more timely than ever), the socially-conscious Mosely intended his book-length essay to awaken the majority of Americans—black and white—who go through life too easily content to wear what he calls the chains of economic oppression, cultural ignorance and racial prejudice. Thus the title of his discourse. Moseley says that while it is […]
The Haunting and the Haunted
Sethe, a former slave, is raising her last child left in the lonely, two story house at 124. Well, they aren’t completely alone. There is the spiteful spirit that bedevils the house, scaring away Sethe’s two sons and turning her mother-in-law infirm. The arrival of Paul D, another former slave that worked on the same farm as Seth, brings a short period of relief from the haunting. Until a few days later, when a young woman shows up on their porch, with no memory, who […]
Fantasy Novel Takes Aim at Slavery
Another urban fantasy contribution by Ilona Andrews, part of their Edge series which I find especially attractive. The Edge is a semi-magical no-holds-barred dumping ground that lies between the Broken, a land of shopping malls and ordinary unmagical lives like ours, and the Weird where powerful magic rules and those with the strongest magic and/or the most exalted lineage rule. Charlotte de Ney is an unequalled physician from the Weird who broke the cardinal rule of healers like herself, and so fled into self-exile in […]
This is Madness!
Antoinette Cosway, the main character of this novel, is the crazy woman in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Rhys imagines the life of Rochester’s first wife and the events that drove her to madness, demonstrating her knowledge and understanding of Jamaican/West Indies history and culture as well as the powerful socio-economic forces that influenced post-Emancipation development there. As Francis Wyndham writes in the introduction, …Rhys knew about the mad Creole heiresses in the early nineteenth century, whose dowries were only an additional burden […]
No excuse for another Reacher knock-off by Baldacci
Baldacci brings John Puller back for another attempt at a Reacher-like hit, but –while slightly better than the first book Zero Day—The Forgotten doesn’t come close to his early stuff. Indeed, Baldacci had a hit-em-out-of-the-park winner with one of his earliest novels Wish You Well, and I’ve been waiting ever since for something with the same degree of character, substance and, frankly, beautiful writing. In The Forgotten, Baldacci tries to capture our interest with the hot-button topic of human slavery in the modern era, but […]