Half a Heart

Rating:
Summary: fragile bonds
Review: This is a beautiful novel that gives us a complex look at the way families can divide over race. Brown never allows us to take sides, as she keeps showing us how the terms of the racial debate are flawed from the start. A brave work by a gifted storyteller.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing book from a good writer.
Review: This novel disappointed me deeply because it started out so good, with so much potential. A white woman gives birth to the child of a black man in 1960s Mississippi. She leaves the child to be raised by the father, but eighteen years later, still haunted by the daughter she lost, she goes looking for her. That premise has potential for melodrama, of course, but also for an interesting exploration of what it means to be a mother, as well as some complicated racial issues.

For the first hundred pages, I thought this novel would probe those issues in a sensitive and intelligent way. The two main characters Ð Miriam, the mother who left her daughter behind, and Ronnee, her bi-racial child Ð start out as intriguing characters. The pain of Miriam, who has a good life, but canÕt appreciate it because of the hole left by her absent child, is palpable. And Ronnee is a beautifully written character. We learn early on that she agrees to meet with her mother mainly because sheÕs hoping for some money to finance her way to college. And yet she doesnÕt come across as a greedy villain, but rather as an intelligent, ambitious and complex young woman.

But once Rosellen Brown goes into flashback to tell the story of MiriamÕs affair with RonneeÕs father, the novel goes astray. The biggest problem is that the author doesnÕt seem to know what to make of MiriamÕs lover, Eljay. She begins with a promising portrait of a charming and intelligent man, somewhat edgy and resentful because of all he has had to suffer to get where he is. But then, out of nowhere, he gets involved with a group of black separatists who seem to take over his personality. Suddenly heÕs a different, incomprehensible, man. Because we never get inside EljayÕs head, but only see him from MiriamÕs point of view, the change in him seems weird. I have the feeling Rosellen Brown was merely trying to make the point that black racism can be just as bad as white racism, but her political point gets in the way of the story. It would have been a lot more interesting to see what Afrocentrism meant to a man like Eljay. Dismissing his point of view seems like a betrayal of a potentially fascinating character.

And the novel goes downhill from there, with one clichÂŽ after another. Almost all the characters, black and white, are bigots, and the bigotry is so blatant and obvious, so crude, that it makes the novel seem anachronistic. God knows racism has not disappeared, but the author seems unaware that it usually takes subtler forms than it did in 1960.

Rosellen Brown is obviously a talented writer, and this novel had a lot of potential, but unfortunately the promise remained unfulfilled.

Rating:
Summary: A long-winded, predictable novel
Review: This novel tries to be "dramatic" with its theme of a white mother and her half-black daughter, but the author takes so long to make anything happen that the reader loses patience early on. Also, the characters aren't very appealing, especially Miriam with her endless brooding. The writing is competent but nothing special. Some of Brown's earlier books were much better.

Rating:
Summary: The cover tells all
Review: Whites are so naive about black culture. The model on the cover is not mulatto, this I know for sure. The book is oversimplified, of course to the advantage of the dominant culture. Race relations 101. Write what you know Ms. Brown, or stick to the Ivy League editors who don't know any better.

Rating:
Summary: A good read on a timely subject
Review: With a whole heart, talented writer Rosellen Brown tackles a hard topic--the reunion of a long-separated mother and daughter--in the context of our national obsessions with race and love. You won't soon forget the biracial daughter, Ronnee, who veers between a prickly anger over her mother's earlier desertion and a poignant hunger for her love.