Silver Sparrow
It took me quite a way through Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones to understand the title, but I was impressed when I finally did.
The book follows the story of two girls - Dana and Chaurisse - both fathered by the same man, though only one knows of the other's existence.
The first half of the book is Dana's and I didn't connect with her that much. The narrative felt more 'tell' than 'show' and the foreshadowing was very clunky: 'After everything that happened...'
However, the relationship dynamics were interesting enough that I wanted to find out what happened, and moving into Chaurisse's half of the book added a lot more layers, as I suddenly knew a lot more than the narrator, so everything had a lot more significance.
It was all pretty depressing overall, though - well-written and engaging enough to keep me reading to the end - but I really wasn't sure what the ultimate message was supposed to be. Life is messy? Family relationships are complicated? The people in your life are never going to be the way you really want them to be?
Certainly not a bad book, and lots of insightful observations about people, but not one that's likely to stay with me.
The book follows the story of two girls - Dana and Chaurisse - both fathered by the same man, though only one knows of the other's existence.
The first half of the book is Dana's and I didn't connect with her that much. The narrative felt more 'tell' than 'show' and the foreshadowing was very clunky: 'After everything that happened...'
However, the relationship dynamics were interesting enough that I wanted to find out what happened, and moving into Chaurisse's half of the book added a lot more layers, as I suddenly knew a lot more than the narrator, so everything had a lot more significance.
It was all pretty depressing overall, though - well-written and engaging enough to keep me reading to the end - but I really wasn't sure what the ultimate message was supposed to be. Life is messy? Family relationships are complicated? The people in your life are never going to be the way you really want them to be?
Certainly not a bad book, and lots of insightful observations about people, but not one that's likely to stay with me.