Raven Leilani

Based on his liberal use of the semicolon, I just assumed this date would go well.

That line is perfectly attuned for my reading enjoyment, I must say. It comes in a strong opening part of the novel, in which our narrator Edie makes wry, amusing comments on her burgeoning relationship with an older married man and her soul killing work life. Unfortunately the man in question turns out to be less promising than his frequent use of semicolons suggests; Edie makes a go of it however.

Except, for him, this seems to be new territory. Not simply to be out on a date with someone who is not his wife and decades younger, but to be out with a girl who happens to be black. I can feel it in how cautiously he says African American. How he absolutely refuses to say the word black.

I enjoyed the unexpected swerve this novel takes when Eric's wife invites Edie to move into their house after she gets evicted from her apartment. Eric fades into the background and this uncertain, quite strange, and oddly touching relationship between the two women takes over the story. Eric and his wife Rebecca are liberal white New Yorkers (who live in Jersey) though Rebecca has a harder edge to her than Eric, as gotten across pretty darn on the nose when she takes Edie to a punk/metal show and they thrash in the mosh pit. She's open enough to allow her husband a girlfriend and invite that girlfriend into her house, but yet has an older, no-nonsense style to her as well, as befits her job as a medical examiner (really, does it get any more no-nonsense than a medical examiner?). She does lots of yoga, and tells her husband "That isn't intersectional feminism, it's bad parenting."

Edie is an amusing and smart narrator but for my money Rebecca is the most interesting character. We can all agree I think that Eric is drawn to be a nothing, a limp foil, someone of whom Edie can say, "I think of all the gods I have made out of feeble men." I actually thought this novel was going to make another huge swerve there at the end, but, lol, no.… (mehr)