Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Book Review: The Narrows


Book Review: The Narrows by Ann Petry 

Goodreads Description: Link Williams is a handsome and brilliant Dartmouth graduate who tends bar for a lack of better opportunities for an African American man in a staid mid-century Connecticut town. The routine of Link’s life is interrupted when he intervenes to save a woman from a late-night attack. When they enter a bar together after the incident, “Camilo” discovers that her rescuer is African American and he that she is a wealthy, married, white woman who’s crossed the town’s racial divide to relieve her life’s tedium. Thus brought together by chance, Link and Camilo draw each other into furtive encounters against the rigid and uncompromising social codes of their town and times.

My Review: I really wanted to like this book. Over her life, Ann Petry worked as a social worker and a journalist, taught courses and wrote for the NAACP, and conducted sociological studies on the influence of segregation on children. This work gave her a very sociological perspective on the world and ultimately influenced the creation of The Narrows, which breaks down systematic racism to illustrate how many moving pieces intersect to justify the vilification and murder of black people. In Petry’s own words: “My aim is to show how simply and easily the environment can change the course of a person’s life.” When I step back and consider the book in whole, it’s so beautiful I could cry, because Petry demonstrates a nuanced understanding of how sociology and psychology shape oppression. However, the experience of reading this book is painful. Beyond that, when taking any of the book’s parts on their own, there’s almost nothing to like about them. It’s like throwing a bunch of garbage at a canvas, yet it somehow makes the Mona Lisa. 

Petry wrote the book with a reflective perspective, using repetition and flashbacks to show how the past continuously interjects into the present and influences our behaviour. It doesn’t matter that Othello was written over 500 years ago, the story of a successful black man marrying a white woman to the displeasure of white men still influences the world around us, shaping perspectives and stereotypes. Petry also uses this reflective structure to demonstrate how childhood trauma shapes us long into adulthood. This reflective style is the crux of my problem with this book, because on the one hand, it is utterly brilliant. It artfully (and accurately) represents how the brain processes memory, how our social environment builds our identity from the ground up, and how we fall back onto sociological programming in times of stress. Yet on the other hand, this writing style is frustrating and boring to read. At times, the repetition becomes so overwhelming that it borders on obnoxious, which robs it of its power. Some scenes took forever to get through simply because the story had to continuously stop to repeat mantras or plot points that we've already seen a dozen times already. If not for this reflective perspective, the book could have easily been half or a third its size. While I think there's something meaningful to be found in this style, it certainly could have been cut down. 

On top of the irritating writing style, every character is terrible. Not even in a “they have flaws” kind of way, but in a "they're a freaking monster" way that left little for me to relate to, attach to, or root for. Link, the main character, beats his love interest (though this is played off as romantic "lovers' quarrels," which... certainly says something about the author and the time period). Bill Hod, a quasi-father figure, beats Link as a child, Camilla betrays her love interest in a sickeningly anti-feminist way, and Abbie cares more about being an upstanding citizen of “the Race” than being a good mother. Even characters who don’t do anything overtly wrong are presented with a kind of sleaziness – from Mamie Powther who is presented as sexually devious, to Jubine the photographer who exposes injustices perpetuated by the rich, but is described as little more than a "greedy voyeur." While this is largely influenced by the POV character and often reveals more about the speaker than the subject (Abbie perceives Mamie as disgustingly sexual, for example), every character's perspective is coloured by this pessimism towards other people, and by the end of the book, all that negativity begins to weigh on the narrative. While the book attempts to present every character with duality, it leans too far into their flaws, leaving little good behind to appreciate. There’s lots of fascinating psychological angles to this story, but likeability is hard to come by. 

As you can see, this book is a frustrating one for me. On the whole, I think it brilliantly explores how historical sociological scripts intersect with an individual's trauma and environment to shape oppression, but I can’t point to a single character or scene that I actually like. The reading experience is so dreadful that I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone, unless you're a literary scholar that's more interested in meaning than your own enjoyment. It's a real shame, too, because I do believe this book is something special, if only reading it wasn't such a drag. 

TL;DR: 2/5 stars. A painfully dreadful read that culminates in an insightful deconstruction of systematic racism. 

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Book Review: Romance in Marseille

 


Book Review: Romance in Marseille by Claude McKay 

Goodreads Description: Buried in the archive for almost ninety years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers--collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy West African sailor. While stowing away on a transatlantic freighter, Lafala is discovered and locked in a frigid closet. Badly frostbitten by the time the boat docks, the once-nimble dancer loses both of his lower legs, emerging from life-saving surgery as what he terms "an amputated man." Thanks to an improbably successful lawsuit against the shipping line, however, Lafala scores big in the litigious United States. Feeling flush after his legal payout, Lafala doubles back to Marseille and resumes his trans-African affair with Aslima, a Moroccan courtesan. With its scenes of black bodies fighting for pleasure and liberty even when stolen, shipped, and sold for parts, McKay's novel explores the heritage of slavery amid an unforgiving modern economy. This first-ever edition of Romance in Marseille includes an introduction by McKay scholars Gary Edward Holcomb and William J. Maxwell that places the novel within both the "stowaway era" of black cultural politics and McKay's challenging career as a star and skeptic of the Harlem Renaissance.

My Review: If I had to sum up Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille in three words, it’d be: queer, punny, and unsatisfying. There’s a lot of elements to like: disability rep, a black man’s success against white society, gender play and fluid openness to sexuality, but the ending undermined a lot of the positives and left a bad taste in my mouth. 

Lafala is a young sailor who travels the world guided by his wit and whimsy, but while stowed away on an American ship, he ends up with frostbite that requires him to amputate both feet. In a twist of fate, Lafala meets a white lawyer while lying in recovery who helps him sue the shipping company for damages. After winning his case, Lafala skips town before the lawyer is able to scam him out of his share and returns to the port town Marseille to reconnect with old friends. Now a rich man, the people of Marseille clamor for Lafala's attention-- and his money-- but Lafala manages to stay one step ahead of his potential scammers at every turn. In this way, the novel is great. It's the story of a black man who, despite his hardships, outsmarts scammers and white oppressors to escape to paradise. Unfortunately, this feels muddied at the end, as his found family are also the people attempting to scam him, confusing their motivations and allegiances. This is what makes the book interesting to some, as they can analyze the characters from multiple perspectives, but to me it reads like a tragedy wherein greed wins over love, loyalty or friendship. The found family that’s established is sacrificed so Lafala remains the smartest man in the room, and the payoff doesn’t feel worth the sacrifice. 

The representation in this book is wonderful. While there’s not a lot of outwardly queer characters, there is heavy implication that certain characters are gay. Characters also question and play with gender, whether through clothing, joking around, or debating the nature of gender roles. As well, Lafala spends the entire book without legs and is never defined by his disability. There’s a nice balance between how it affects his life/mental health and how it doesn't make him less of a person. McKay’s writing is also delightfully punny. He plays with metaphor and symbols, twists language to suit his needs, and utilizes sharp-witted wordplay that is both funny and thought provoking. 

TL;DR: 3/5 stars. A sharp-witted queer tale with excellent disability rep and an unsatisfying finish.