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December 4, 2007
Sandrine
I've been having trouble with William Gibson's latest one for weeks, only managing a couple of pages a night before falling asleep and not being able to keep track of all the intertwined plots and the dozen or so key characters. I finally gave up and grabbed the next thing on my pile, one I'd been looking forward to: Dedra Johnson's Sandrine's Letter To Tomorrow.
I could have read this in one sitting. I had to force myself to put it down at 2am the first night because I had work the next morning, but I read it some more at lunch and finished it the next night. It was like a punch in the stomach to me, the first night my heart was racing, and I'm still not completely over it days later. Others might react differently but if you or a loved one have lived through similar circumstances as Sandrine, reading this will be an emotional experience that you won't soon forget. I know for me it picked at some scabs that should have healed long ago.
Sandrine is a bookish light-skinned black girl growing up in New Orleans in the 1970's, being handed off between parents and stepparents with varying degrees of parental involvement. It's moving and it's shocking and it's sweet and it's brave, sometimes all at the same time.
This is brilliant and I want more like it.
Posted by ray at December 4, 2007 11:30 PM | Permalink
Categories: [books | new orleans ]
Comments
YAY! new book recommendation! YAY!
Sorry to hear about the Gibson. He has gotten draggy, hasn't he? I noticed it after Idoru.
Posted by: Darkneuro at December 5, 2007 8:43 AM
Sounds worth checking out.
I didn't have any problems getting through Spook Country. I liked it well enough, although not as much as Pattern Recognition.
Posted by: ttrentham at December 5, 2007 11:10 AM
Don't get me wrong, I think Spook Country is a great book. It's just that my reading time is usually pretty scattered and late at night, and for some reason Gibson was putting me to sleep every 2 or 3 pages.
If I had a weekend to do nothing but lie around on the couch reading it, I'd probably enjoy it, but I was starting to lose the plot thread so I tabled it for now.
Posted by: Ray at December 5, 2007 11:13 AM
Sandrine is indeed one helluva book. I couldn't put it down at all.
Posted by: liprap at December 5, 2007 4:18 PM
Damn, Ray! Thanks! Your praise means a lot b/c I know you are a Reader. This is better than that People review (LOL). It's the kind of review/feedback a writer lives for.
Posted by: Dedra Johnson at December 5, 2007 5:05 PM
Don't gush too much or I might leaning on you to look at my rough drafts.
When do we get a link to the People review? And how the hell did you score the Robert Olen Butler quote?
Posted by: Ray at December 5, 2007 8:57 PM
Funny thing about Gibson, I just finished it last night. I'd been reading it very sparingly, to savor it, and I realize now that reading one chapter at a time is much like reading 3-6 pages at a time, ie, not much more than you were!
Glad to hear you got into something more gripping, though. Nothing beats a book you can't put down.
Posted by: Holly at December 6, 2007 1:10 AM
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