SILVER SPARROW
By Tayari Jones (Algonquin Books, $19.95, 340 pages)
Novelist Tayari Jones weaves a tense, layered and evocative tale of two complicated parallel families, set in Atlanta in the 1970s and '80s. Smart, beautiful Dana and her smart, beautiful mother, Gwen, have a secret: James, Dana's businessman dad, is long married to another woman and has another daughter, Chaurisse, just four months younger than Dana. "Atlanta ain't nothing but a country town, and everyone knows everybody," says James, warning the 5-year-old Dana to keep quiet about his identity. After a childhood spent "surveiling" the protected "legitimate" family, a term proud Gwen hates, rebellious teenaged Dana inserts herself into her half-sister's life, with tragic results. Jones explores the rivalry and connection of siblings, the meaning of beauty, the perils of young womanhood, the complexities of romantic relationships and the contemporary African-American experience. "Love didn't always look and act the way you expected it to," notes Dana, accepting life's many limitations, and after reading "Silver Sparrow," you'll see her heartbreaking point.
MARCI SCHMITT,
FEATURES DESIGNER
SEPARATE KINGDOMS
By Valerie Laken (Harper, 199 pages, $14.99)
An epigraph reads, "Being who you are is not a disorder," a truth that the characters in "Separate Kingdoms" struggle to internalize. Each story in the collection ends open and raw, like the wounds that drive them. The first story is of a Russian boy, blind from birth, who begins to realize the pubescent horror of having to rely completely on his mother when a friend asks him to buy a dirty magazine. Another tells of a woman whose recent amputation is also a blow to her pride; she hides her body and mind from her husband as he attempts to help her move forward. These are people who declare themselves outcasts from society even as those around them -- friends, family, strangers -- are seeking a connection. From a man who loses his thumbs in a factory accident to a coed studying abroad and searching for a home during the fall of the Soviet Union, Laken's characters are captured in snapshots of pain and loss. Their loneliest and most defeated moments are told in vivid emotional detail, then whisked away in spite of the reader's hope for a warm and satisfying conclusion.
KRISTINA VRAGOVIC,
COPY EDITOR
