Unbelievably, however, I don't think I've ever read a great Detroit novel before. An Elmore Leonard book years ago that I enjoyed, but that is about it. With my love of Baltimore literature, this was something missing in my life that I didn't even know -- until I read The Turner House by Angela Flournoy.
Baltimore County Librarian and Dan Rodricks podcast book critic Paula Gallagher, who I'm lucky to call my friend, passed along a personally autographed copy of The Turner House back in April, when BCPL hosted Ms. Flournoy for their "BC Reads" series. I couldn't attend the series in the midst of baseball coaching season, but once the school year calmed down, I've been slowly making my way through the novel, savoring every page. I've been on the go this summer a lot, but my scant time to sit down and read did not hinder my enjoyment of it, which, despite jumping in time between the 1940s and 2008, and a huge cast of characters, was easy to fall back into.
The Turner House was a finalist for the National Book Award last year, and it is easy to see why: reading it, you feel like you are in the hands of a master. I often like the flourishes that young writers make in debut novels, but Flournoy is so mature and assured in her writing that it never felt a debut novel. Indeed, the novel it reminded me the most of was Song of Solomon: besides a poignant urination scene, Flournoy has some of Morrison's gift of moving between the past and present seamlessly, of meshing fantastical elements with realism, of ably focusing individually on a large cast of characters, of insightfully examining African American journeys from the south to the north.
The protagonist is probably Charles, or "Cha-Cha," the oldest, who, at the age of 64, is having a crisis of sorts. But, then, so is the youngest, Lelah, and the second-youngest, Troy. And these are three siblings that get the most page time, and all vivid and authentically wounded characters, characters that you root for, sometimes want to grab and shake, and other times, just hug. Other siblings show up for just a line or two, while others, including wives and romantic partners and a psychiatrist, are well-dileanated even without much time devoted to them in the novel. We also get significant portions looking at the Turner parents, Frances and Viola, as they embark on their personal Great Migrations from Arkansas to Detroit in the 1940s.
Angela Flournoy |
And, as a Detroit fan, I thought Flournoy's use of details was especially accurate, from ordering pizzas from Buddy's (our family at there all the time!) to referring to the sugary carbonated drinks as "pop" to larger details, like how beautiful Southfield looked in the 1970s. There's even a brief section about "haints" being at the corner of Seneca and Medbury after two boys were killed at the intersection, and description of a shrine there, and I did a Google Map search and, sure enough, there's a little shrine at the corner there. Coincidence? Or Flournoy's research was that thorough? (She didn't grow up in Detroit, but her father is from there.)
Overall, this is one of best novels I've read in years, though, and I can't wait to see what Flournoy can comes up with next.
from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2arTv6D Book Review: The Turner House by Angela Flournoy - Entrepreneur Generations
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