Orange Laughter [Paperback]

Ralph Ellison is still alive. This novel is a typical continuation of his themes. One black man entirely locked up Underneath or Below, in the Subway maze of corridors, tracks and blind rooms is the storyteller. He is also locked up in his lost memory that he is going to recapture little by little. And what will come out of it ? A brilliant black woman, Agatha will reveal her mystery. She is the granddaughter of a black minister in North Carolina, but she is the daughter of a white man and her mother was beaten to death by the grandfather of this white man. She will deliver her child in the hands of the brother of this white man. The minister will get a tooth for a tooth, a child for a child, and the brother of the white man, Agatha's uncle, will look after her and then what was to happen will happen, even if it is a blind alley and a dead end. The white man, Agatha's father, will go away and have another child from another woman, this time white. She will die and then the father will die and the child will be entrusted to his grandmother who will come back to the father's town to find his relatives, but she ignores his real name. Fate will bring the white boy and Agatha, brother and sister, together, and the other boy, the black boy Agatha is taking care of and who is our storyteller, will become the friend of the white boy. White and black are so entangled together that they cannot be separated. The whole story takes place in the Civil Rights Movements era and the Ku Klux Klan is all-powerful in this small town of Edene, the badly-named Edene. This will dictate the events and Agatha, her white brother and her black child will get swallowed up in the hatred that goes along with KKK and the emerging Civil Rights Movement. The end will be tragic. Both boys will manage to go to New York and get lost in the Big Apple, the white one successful and the black one rejected or rather dropping out. They will also manage to reestablish a connection, communication and memory, coming back to the black boy, who is now over forty, a door will reopen of a new relation between the two boys, Mikey and Tony. The stuff is heavy, pungent and strong. The novel is interesting and quite easy to read and follow. It shows how guilt, desire and hatred are all twisted out of shape and embedded in all loving postures. Yet something sounds and feels awkward if not out of pace. It is bleak enough to be true, and yet the divided personalities, loyalties and lives are rather well shown on the black side but remain kind of schematic on the white side. The wall standing between the two communities is well rooted in white fear and hatred, but it is insufficiently rooted in the same feelings on the black side. The author seems to be overprudent to describe the hatred, not the fear, the Blacks feel in front of white injustice or rather social and historical injustice. Relations with people from the other side was just as much rejected on the white side as on the black side. This latter rejection is not entirely felt and depicted : it is too much seen as a response to the stimulus of white hatred. It is not only that : the concept of difference, uncrossable difference existed and still exists on both sides, blocking the possibility for America to see that all it represents and it has invented is the result of a constant give-and-take process between the two communities, the result of a cooperation that nearly no one has the courage to show and assume, except maybe Ralph Ellison in the most recent half century. We do not reach the concept of democratic diversity that is emerging at that very period of time (1960s and 1970s) in Ralph Ellisons's writings and thinking. A great book that deals with memory that blocks history in its loss and that unblocks life in its recovery.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I could not put this book down: it is stunning -
beautiful, disturbing, frightening: brilliant and should have won prizes. The language is rich and urgent, the characters and settings compelling, the messages about good and evil and humanity are ones that we all should heed. Read it.

Orange Laughter moved me totally. The characters are powerful and the attention Ms Ross pays to their rendition is awesome. It took me on a roller coaster ride through the sewers of New York to the terrifying beauty of North Carolina. This is a book of intriguing juxtaposition as well as a fascinating age-old tale of internal struggle between good and evil. This is a book about a man at war with himself. Ms Ross deserves maximum respect... seriously important for a woman writing from a male perspective.What is also impressive is that despite the darkness and desperation of this writer's themes, she pulls hope and redemption from the whole tangled web and leaves you ultimately wishing and hoping for the best. Immaculate.