Passing Strange : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Clever twist, engaging voice
Review: I love debut novels, the books that took years to write, that have the culmination of the best ideas a writer has saved for a decade or a lifetime. Because it isn't long before the publisher asks them to squeeze out a book a year and the writing gets bland. In that capacity, I loved Passing Strange, a superb debut novel.

Strange is the story a young woman blessed with a perfect body and a highly imperfect face. Her body has enough to draw the eye of a young socialite who convinces her to marry him-and get plastic surgery post-marriage. But once she agrees and she has the face to match the body, her world changes and she begins to views others (specifically the black community near and within her home) as the disenfranchised group to which she used to belong. The story moves and is written with a beautiful and clever voice in our narrator.

The only place the book came up short, which is why I only gave it four stars, is the ending. I almost feel that Sally MacLeod had started writing the book but forgot how she would end it. The story goes down a path and gets stuck there (the murder of her husband) and seems to abandon the writing and voice of the earlier chapters.

That said, it is still worth a read, and worth a purchase. This is an excellent debut novel overall and I will be keeping my eye on her next novel.

Rating:
Summary: a lesson in when to not publish your first manuscript
Review: I'm busily working on my own manuscript to complete my MFA in crative writing and I've stumbled upon this highly disappointing novel. I chose it because it dealt with issues of living as a white, politically-concious person on the South-- issues close to my own heart and creative project (I grew up in Tennesee). Instead of finding an enlightened kindred spirit, I found a story narrated by an outsider who judges, misunderstands and misrepresents people in her affluent Southern social circle. When "Claudia" isn't busy accusing all white Southerners of racism, she's wearing her African American lover as an exotic trinket on a charm bracelet. Seemingly unknowingly, McLeod dehumanizes the character of Calvin and the entire black community by forcing them all into her prescribed perameters that approach that old, highly reductive "Noble Savage" status. Also, Claudia doesn't encounter a single socially and politically aware white person in the entire story-- I can only speak for myself but it sours my stomach and breaks my heart every time I find another white Northerner who underestimates the feelings of disgust and unease many of us have about our history. Not to mention our respect for and boundless joy in the beautiful cultural diversity that exists in the 21st century American South. All in all, I find this book misguided, myopic, judgemental and annoying. If you can make it through the reading without punching her smug little author photo on the back cover several times, I salute you!

Rating:
Summary: From New Fiction Review
Review: This is not just a brave first novel, it is a brave novel full-stop. An atmosphere of foreboding and regret pervades Claudia's recollections from the opening page. As she reveals her past, with particular emphasis on a childhood fraught with the cruelty inflicted upon a "plain" girl, we are engaged by Claudia's quirky disposition and maneuvering intelligence. Growing up in Vermont, Claudia makes her uneasy passage from yearning adolescent to young woman with the help of one undeniable asset: she has been blessed with a beautiful body. Eventually, she snares the object of her longing, a feckless rich kid from Manhattan. Against all odds, she and Dan Dryburgh marry. Dan's mother Ping, a classic of her kind, decides the ugly duckling must be transformed if the young couple are to have the perfect life she imagines. Claudia, to Dan's great relief, acquiesces to cosmetic surgery. For Claudia, it is a lonely experience. When Dan's employer offers him a better position in North Carolina, he and Claudia decide to leave the past behind. But, as events unfold in the sleepy southern town, Claudia finds it difficult to shake off the years of unkindness, while Dan revels in a new found sense of superiority. At this point, although the book has been fascinating - MacLeod's vision of the American south is astonishingly fresh - it now takes on a darkly disturbing dimension. Claudia, sensitive to the subtly racist attitudes of her charming new friends, is compelled to explore the shunned world of black sensibility. As she herself once was, her black acquaintances are too often treated with kindly disdain. What Claudia reveals we instinctively know to be true and it is indeed unsettling. The embodiment of these melancholy revelations appears in the form of the inscrutably knowing Calvin Moore. As Claudia and Calvin are drawn together, we sense the dire complications to come. Their intimacy is mesmerizing. Predictably, the lovers' fate hinges on murder. But MacLeod brilliantly resists all the cliches. With assuredness, she obliges us to marvel at a society that insists on maintaining such a vast paint-box of grotesquely arbitrary legal procedures. A stunning modern tragedy - wrenching, but not without its tender rewards.