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Summary: Must-read, exquisitely crafted stories of black life.
Review: "Lost in the City" is simply the best collection of short stories about life in African America to be published in the last decade. It may well be the best collection of fiction centered in the nation's capital to be published in the past 50 years. Synopses reduce the poetry of these tales to cliches. You have to read these journeys to witness how and why Edward P. Jones requires more than book-priced "tickets" to view a few poignant inner lives; he wants us present and aware for the whole heartbreaking, strengthening ride. If you love black people or just want to understand us better, "Lost in the City" is a must-read.
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Summary: I agree: truly is a crime that this is out of print.
Review: (That's really all I have to add. Why don't they reissue it?)
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Summary: For the living: read this book
Review: An easy-to-read collection of fourteen short stories, all set in Washington D.C. Edward P. Jones tells the stories of African Americans of all ages struggling to make ends meet in our nation's capital. The author's unique writing style can be confusing at times, but creates a real voice for uncovering the reality behind the museums and monuments. Mr. Jones shows what D.C. is really like by pushing the political curtain aside to reveal the city's vast mass of poverty, crime, drugs, and misfortune.
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Summary: For the living: read this book
Review: An easy-to-read collection of fourteen short stories, all set in Washington D.C. Edward P. Jones tells the stories of African Americans of all ages struggling to make ends meet in our nation's capital. The author's unique writing style can be confusing at times, but creates a real voice for uncovering the reality behind the museums and monuments. Mr. Jones shows what D.C. is really like by pushing the political curtain aside to reveal the city's vast mass of poverty, crime, drugs, and misfortune.
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Summary: Edward P. Jones is MAGNIFICENT
Review: AS THE NEW YEAR IS UPON US, I OFFICIALLY OFFER YOU MY LIST OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS THAT I'VE READ IN 2004. THIS IS OUT OF ABOUT 84 BOOKS THAT I'VE READ THIS YEAR. EVERY SINGLE BOOK ON THIS LIST IS A MASTERPIECE WORTH BUYING. YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED WITH GREAT LITERATURE LIKE THE FOLLOWING:
"THE DARKEST CHILD"--Delores Phillips
The finest, most dramatic debut I've read in years. Top notch and gut-wrenching. This is by far the best book of 2004.
"BRICK LANE"--Monica Ali
Superb entry into a world foreign yet all too familiar. Flawless, beautiful writing.
"HOTTENTOT VENUS"--Barbara Chase Riboud
A True Story. Which makes this book all the more shocking and tragic. By now you've heard of the kidnapped and dehumanized South African woman paraded in the 1800's Europe as a "freak" because of her huge posterior and the apron over her genitals. Chase Riboud chronicles the tale perfectly and makes it far more interesting than just history. The fact that "Sarah" was like a Pop Superstar of her day makes it all the more chilling in my opinion. A definite Must-Read.
"FLESH AND THE DEVIL"--Kola Boof
Totally original, unexpected black love story. Chock full of African history, U.S. black history, fantastic plot twists, pulsating sex, equally dazzling "lovemaking", brilliant observations about race, color and sexism and plenty of risk-taking by the sensational Sudanese-born Kola Boof, truly a NEW STAR in the "epic" sense. Fabulous!
"DOUGLASS' WOMEN"--Jewel Parker Rhodes
If ever a fictionalized story of a real person's life/real events makes you totally believe inch and detail of the fiction writer's imagination--this one is it!! Jewel Parker Rhodes is turning out to be one of our most ardent writers of historical fiction, her brevity and flair for honest human emotion making her just a little BETTER, in my opinion, than the queen of historical black fiction--Barbara Chase Riboud. You can't go wrong with "DOUGLASS' WOMEN", it's sensational.
"ERASURE"---Percival Everett
I know. I'm late reading this one. But it's classic, fantastic, the greatest book ever written about being a "black" writer today. SUPERB. 10 Stars.
"A DISTANT SHORE"--Caryl Phillips
Great novel about "human beings" ripped apart in their own world and then thrown together in new equally dreadful surroundings. A black man and a white woman are juxtaposed in England with terribly beautiful insight by the writer. It's a hard book to explain, except that it's about human beings finding their real true minds. Superb!!!! I give this one 10 stars.
"DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE"--Z.Z. Packer
The breakout debut of the new Alice Walker and Toni Morrison rolled into one. Z.Z. Packer is outrageously talented and brilliant. These sparse, witty, intelligent, insightful short stories will bring you to tears, make you laugh and truly astonish you.
"THE KNOWN WORLD"--Edward P. Jones
This book starts off kind of "slow", but once you get into it, it's quite shocking, easily one of the most important stories told in a decade. Jones deserves all the accolades and awards he's received for this masterful masterpiece of the new century.
"LOVE"--Toni Morrison
Still the undisputable greatest writer writing. Toni Morrison offers up one of her very best novels, the most underrated and overlooked novel of the year. Absolutely meszmerizing, a bute.
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Summary: Lost and Found
Review: Edward Jones's "Lost in the City" is a great read. The fourteen short stories are about African American's living in Washington D.C. Throughout the book, characters travel up and down the streets of the nation's capital, going through many obstacles. For me, it's usually hard to get into the beginning of a story and understand it completely. As I kept reading story after story, it got easier to get into the story right away. There were times when the word structure was hard to read. Other then that, Jones did a excellent job of unfolding the truth behind the streets of Washington D.C. I highly recommend reading this collection of stories.
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Summary: Enjoyable Read
Review: Edward Jones's "Lost in the City" is a great read. The fourteen short stories are about African American's living in Washington D.C. Throughout the book, characters travel up and down the streets of the nation's capital, going through many obstacles. For me, it's usually hard to get into the beginning of a story and understand it completely. As I kept reading story after story, it got easier to get into the story right away. There were times when the word structure was hard to read. Other then that, Jones did a excellent job of unfolding the truth behind the streets of Washington D.C. I highly recommend reading this collection of stories.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable Read
Review: Enjoyed the various styles and content. Will read again.Also enjoyed: 'Sula' Morrison, 'Color Purple' Walker and 'Hemorrhage in My Head' by NMR If you love books that rely on a certain place to tell a story then you will enjoy the latter.
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Summary: Phenomenal!
Review: I have a strange suspicion that I would not have read Lost in the City if Edward P. Jones had not won the Pulitzer Prize for The Known World. And I think that would have been a big, big mistake.
This is an excellent collection of short stories, even for someone who doesn't really know a thing about Washington, D.C. or the people who live there. The stories aren't short stories in the most traditional sense - they don't end with surprising or inevitable events or revelations. But each and every glimpse into the lives of these characters is interesting, thoughtful, and specific. Jones manages to paint a colorful, human, and memorable picture of the lives of each of the characters he introduces.
Perhaps the most arresting part of his the stories, for me, is the language. There are so many passages that I will remember, but I will only share a few. In the story "Young Lions," a character named Caesar says to his girlfriend that he loves her:
"I'm glad you told me," she said. "I was beginning to wonder. You made my day."
He promised to fix her dinner before to went to Manny's and he told her once again that he loved her.
"I wish I could record that," she said, "and play it back any time I wanted."
These lines alone told me so, so much about the girlfriend, Carol, and I know that I won't forget her. Later, a character in a story called "The Sunday Following Mother's Day" notes that her father "sounded like every black country person she had ever heard, those people who talked of fetchin this and wearin britches and someone commencin to do such and such." I laughed out loud, because I, too, know some of these country people, and Jones's description is perfect. In the last story, "Marie," Jones write that Marie "was eighty-six years old, and had learned that life was all chaos and painful uncertainty and that the only way to get through it was to expect to chaos even in the most innocent of moments. Offer a crust of bread to a sick bird and you often drew back a bloody finger."
Another delightful aspect of the book is that characters don't disappear at the end of a story. The two teenage girls who appear briefly in "The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed," pregnant and moving in together, show up again as adults with 20-year old sons in "His Mother's House." Two other characters in "Rhonda Ferguson" also appear in their own story in "A Butterfly on F Street." There are a few other characters who appear twice, and I believe that several minor characters in this collection will appear in Jones's next short story collection, which should be published this year. (One of the stories was already published in the New Yorker.) I can't wait to read them all.
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Summary: an obliterated community brought back to life
Review: I lived in DC from 1991 to 2002 and I always wondered about the boarded up storefronts and houses that peppered downtown some streets away from the Smithsonain mall and monuments. Well, here they are brought back to life, with 14 tales that take you from street to street through what is largely a ghost town. I was genuinely excited to recognize names of stores that have long since been closed, to know a bit of who once shopped there and how they interacted. Most of this takes place in what is now called Metro Center, an area that is only now experiencing a comeback. The stories I loved best -- perhaps because they made me so sad --- were "The Store", about a young man who only intends to work at a store for a week but ends up staying for years, befirending the proprietress he initially hated, "An Orange Line train to Ballston", not just because I used to commute on it but surely everyone who takes public transportation anywhere sees the same people at the same time every day -- ever wonder what would happen if you connected with one of them? And especially "the Sunday Following Mother's Day", about three generations of men named Sam and two women named Madeline, where the father kills the mother and its consequences reverberate for decades through so many lives.
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