Carla
I read this all at once; I feel like I fell into it, and was in Louisiana for a time today. I need to get ahold of myself now before I can really talk to other people.
This novel is so beautiful in its darkness and ugliness and despair. The sycamore tree will always stand tall, the sugar cane will always be lovely and sweet, no matter how ugly and hopeless humans make each others’ lives.
A note on categorization and content: This novel is placed in the Young Adult genre on Hardcover, and I deeply disagree. This is a novel of adult subject matter, adult situations—murder, sex, alcohol abuse, intense violence, even more intense racism, classism, race relations in the South in the period after WWII, and the death penalty and how that has been used sometimes as a tool of racism in the United States. It is dark and upsetting from page one in a dark and realistic manner not seen in YA literature. This is our history, getting up in our face and daring us to make eye contact, and I think it’s a novel to grow into, to prepare for.
I read this all at once; I feel like I fell into it, and was in Louisiana for a time today. I need to get ahold of myself now before I can really talk to other people.
This novel is so beautiful in its darkness and ugliness and despair. The sycamore tree will always stand tall, the sugar cane will always be lovely and sweet, no matter how ugly and hopeless humans make each others’ lives.
A note on categorization and content: This novel is placed in the Young Adult genre on Hardcover, and I deeply disagree. This is a novel of adult subject matter, adult situations—murder, sex, alcohol abuse, intense violence, even more intense racism, classism, race relations in the South in the period after WWII, and the death penalty and how that has been used sometimes as a tool of racism in the United States. It is dark and upsetting from page one in a dark and realistic manner not seen in YA literature. This is our history, getting up in our face and daring us to make eye contact, and I think it’s a novel to grow into, to prepare for.