Memphis: A Novel by Tara M. Stringfellow

 Publisher: The Dial Press Pages:272

From Amazon:

    Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

My Thoughts:

    This book is hard to put down. The author has a beautiful writing style. She can paint a million pictures with a simple sentence. This is a beautiful story of 4 generations of women living in the family home in a Memphis neighborhood. It is a story of family, sisters, and the struggles that single mothers face.It is a story of survival. It is a story of finding one's own truth and following one's dreams. I loved this book and I look forward to reading more books by this author.

Read this book if....

    *you love African-American literary fiction

    *you love southern fiction
    *you  love stories about sisterhood & family
    *you love family sagas

Sweetwater by: Christina Baker Kline

Title: Sweetwater Author: Christina Baker Kline Publisher: Aaron Asher Books Publication date: 1993

I chose this book because it was (1) southern fiction and (2) was the story of a woman starting over, so to speak. I love novels like that. Cassie Simon leaves behind an unfaithful lover and a dead end job at his art studio when she inherits a home from her grandfather in Sweetwater, Tennessee. She packs everything into an old station wagon and heads south to a family she doesn't remember. Having moved north with her yankee jewish father after her mother was killed in a drunk driving accident (the driver was her grandfather) when she was three, Christina knows nothing of Tennessee, the house she has inherited, or the family she has there. What follows is a story of getting to know her family and uncovering dark secrets about a mysterious drowning that took place on the farm shortly before her mother was killed. Each chapter is preceded by the thoughts of her grandmother, known as Clyde, as she thinks about her unhappy marriage. 

I really didn't enjoy this novel very much. It was sad, dark and dismal. It portrayed southerners as narrow-minded religious nuts, or unintelligent air-heads. It also has incest between cousins, which, although a joke with some northerners, is not accurate at all. Baker justifies the incest in the characters' eyes by saying one of them was adopted. It is still gross and not. It really does nothing to help an already bland story. (Maybe that's how y'all do things up north, but down here, it is just gross.) None of the characters were likable. All were angry, sad, and/ or one-dimensional. There were just too many cliches and stereotypes to make it believable, in my opinion. It was a great plot, but it just fell flat.

Bloodroot

Title: Bloodroot Author: Amy Greene Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pages: 291 Copyright: 2010

From Amazon:

Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path: Myra Lamb, a wild young girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain; her grandmother Byrdie Lamb, who protects Myra fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike; the neighbor boy who longs for Myra yet is destined never to have her; the twin children Myra is forced to abandon but who never forget their mother’s deep love; and John Odom, the man who tries to tame Myra and meets with shocking, violent disaster. Against the backdrop of a beautiful but often unforgiving country, these lives come together—only to be torn apart—as a dark, riveting mystery unfolds.

With grace and unflinching verisimilitude, Amy Greene brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life. Here is a spellbinding tour de force that announces a dazzlingly fresh, natural-born storyteller in our midst.

The first time I picked this book up, I put it back down. It just didn't appeal to me at first. Later, I picked it up and tried again. I liked it, but not as well as some other Appalachian novels. This is a tough, gritty, no-holds-barred novel. You can't have a weak stomach with this one. It is what it is. I'd have liked it better if it had played more upon the supernatural qualities brought forth in the beginning, but that's just my personal preference. There is a great deal of sadness and abuse here. I realize this can mimic real life in some cases. It's just a grittier story than I normally care for. Still, it was ok. Will I read her next one? Yes, probably. Will this be on my favorites list? No, but I didn't hate it either.

Read this book if...

*you love novels set in Appalachia

*you love southern fiction