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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
engrossing forceful, and impeccably crafted, 4 Sep 2006
Some things are well worth waiting for and Edward P. Jonses's follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel "The Known World" (2003) is most assuredly one of them. Once again he uses short story formats to illuminate and make memorable his characters, ordinary people, really, but to the reader they are unforgettable. This author's evocation of black life in America is incomparable.
The 14 stories that comprise "All Aunt Hagar's Children" are set in Washington, the city where Jones was raised and now lives. He opens with "In The Blink of God's Eye," the story of Ruth and Aubrey, a young couple in their late teens and recently married. Ruth does not always rest well in "godforsaken Washington" while Aubrey "always slept the sleep of a man not long out of boyhood." One night when Ruth was wakeful she went out in back where she found a baby tied in a bundle hanging from a tree limb. Thus, she thought Washington was "a city where they hung babies in night trees."
As is his wont Jones treats readers to the earlier lives of his characters, rendering them all the more accessible and sympathetic. This is especially true in "Resurrecting Methuselah" in which we meet Anita Channing who sits by the bedside of Bethany, her ill daughter. She sits in a wooden chair built a century and a half ago by a former slave. Anita's husband, Percival, is serving in Okinawa, where he spends much time with a prostitute, Sara Lee. When Percival discovers he has breast cancer he calls Anita and asks her to come to him. She reaches Honolulu, a stopover in her flight, where she has an opportunity to look back on her childhood and wonder what the future holds for herself and her child.
"All Aunt Hagar's Children" concludes with "Tapestry," another story of a young couple, Anne and George, marrying and leaving their rural roots behind. George is a porter on a train, the train that carries them to Washington. As the train slows close to its destination Anne whispers, Mama, Papa, "I'm a long way from home."
For this reader that was the gist of all of these marvelous stories, people seeking a better life a long way from home.
Jones is such an incredibly gifted writer, his prose is succinct, true, impeccably crafted. Reading his work is not only a pleasure but a privilege as well.
- Gail Cooke
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