I wish my high school curriculum had included James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk. Reading it at 33 was powerful. Reading it in high school would have been that much more so. The story it tells is simple yet indelible. Tish and Fonny are teenagers who've grown up in the same neighborhood in New York City their whole lives. They've always been friends, but as they approach adulthood they both come to realize that their bond is love. They're happy, looking forward to starting their lives together, scoping out a loft in which they can live and has space for Fonny to pursue his dreams of being a sculptor. But then there's an accusation: a woman claims that Fonny raped her, and he's jailed pending trial.

Shortly after he's sent away, Tish discovers she's pregnant. Her warm, loving family accepts the news with joy, as does Fonny's father, but his primly religious mother and sisters disapprove. The urgency of Fonny's plight escalates enormously: Tish and her unborn child need him home. Their loved ones undertake extraordinary efforts to gain his release as Tish gets closer to her due date, and she reminisces about how they found themselves in this predicament.

I tend to find, in stories about young lovers, that the lovers themselves are often the least interesting part of it, and it was true for me here as well. While Tish and Fonny's story and the forces that play upon them are powerful, neither of them is an especially vivid character. They're sweet, their love is pure, and it's easy to feel outraged about the injustices visited upon them. Thankfully, Baldwin has surrounded them with an engaging supporting cast. The way Tish's family mobilizes to secure a lawyer for Fonny, and her mother's trip to Puerto Rico to try to find the woman who accused him in particular, create intrigue and drama that keep the story moving forward.

I'll be honest, though: the plot, as thought-provoking and heartwrenching as it can be, isn't the main attraction here. It's the writing. This was my first Baldwin book, and I fell in love with his powerful, lyrical prose. It's not dense, but it is a book that encourages you to read it slowly...each word is chosen with obvious care, and the way he strings them together is masterful. The book may be relatively short, but there's a lot there. I can already tell this is one I'll return to and be able to get even more out of with subsequent readings. I would recommend this book widely, it's beautifully written with a message no less relevant today than when it was published. ( )

From beginning to end, a horrible book.

At the beginning: 100 pages of repetitive thoughts before even mentioning the crime which then gets explored over the next 200 pages but there's so little to explore that it's largely filled with more pointless thoughts and dialogue.

At the end, huh? What kind of an ending was that? Normally, I would ask someone to explain it to me but in this case, I don't care and don't even want to know.

Other notes:

I can accept things being dated but .. I still don't see the point of reading this now. I'm all too familiar with police misbehavior and I suppose the book may have been shocking when it was written decades ago but now at this pivot point, the police misbehavior makes for tiresome reading. The characters are not interesting either. The two leads were immature and acted that way. The other characters weren't any better. How many times did I have to listen to a character say "We have to get him out of jail?" The interactions between the parents and the sisters - again, largely immature. If the dialogue sparkled in some way that would have been nice but it was just banal dialogue.

Some sections had potential but were disappointing. For example, when the mother traveled to Puerto Rico had potential but again the action there was absurdly insipid. A few key scenes with the lawyer were ok. But he was raped in jail and that became one sentence? Huh?! And of course the ending - see my comment earlier. ( )

A classic for a reason. Baldwin has such a way with words. This book simultaneously captures a specific moment in time and place yet somehow feels timeless and generalizable to so many Black communities across 100 years.

One note: there is a LOT of casual homophobia in this novel that I found very jarring. I am sure an expert could tell you whether this has some deeper meaning but to me it was simply something that wrenched me out of the narrative a few times. Sigh. ( )

A perfect novel about injustice, togetherness, and love in its most genuine and pure state. ( )

A stunning love story about a young Black woman whose life is
torn apart when her lover is wrongly accused of a crime