Sing, Unburied, Sing (shortlisted For The Women's Prize For Fiction 2018)

By (author) Jesmyn Ward; By (author) Ward Jesmyn
Description
_______________ SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2017 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA''S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW STATESMAN, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, TIME AND THE BBC _______________ ''A must'' - Margaret Atwood ''A searing, urgent read'' - Celeste Ng ''Staggering'' - Marlon James ''Disarmingly beautiful'' - Spectator ''Blazing with power, grief and tenderness'' - Financial Times _______________ An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power – and limitations – of family bonds. Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. His mother, Leonie, is in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is black and her children’s father is white. Embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances, she wants to be a better mother, but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first century America.
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This wrenching new novel by Jesmyn Ward digs deep into the not-buried heart of the American nightmare. A must
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A novel as blazingly hymn-like as the title suggests
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Beautiful in every sense ... Her characters feel wholly true ... Long after the end, we continue to worry after them, love them in spite of their faults, and feel their pain
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Hauntingly lyrical
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A powerfully alive novel haunted by ghosts; a road trip where people can go but they can never leave; a visceral and intimate drama that plays out like a grand epic, Sing, Unburied, Sing is staggering
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The connection between the injustices of the past and the desperation of present are clearly drawn in Sing, Unburied, Sing, a book that charts the lines between the living and the dead, the loving and the broken. I am a huge fan of Jesmyn Ward’s work, and this book proves that she is one of the most important writers in America today
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Ward is a lyrical, visceral storyteller, one who is as adept at conveying the tenderness of sibling love as the terror and brutality of racist violence
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Blazing with power, grief and tenderness, Jesmyn Ward’s third novel breathes danger into the classic American road trip … What might, in less sure hands, have remained a local tale, makes a searing story of universal power … Ward takes the territory made so familiar by writers such as William Faulkner or Eudora Welty, and reclaims it
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Ghosts, the voices of the dying, painful journeys across an unforgiving country. This is Faulkner territory. Ward’s updated version is gruesomely fascinating, especially as she rounds out her story with characters of real-world complexity … Her cool handling of the mythical tropes of journeying and list