I read Another Brooklyn a couple of years ago and was completely blown away by the delicacy of the prose and the insight Woodson imbued her characters with. So when Red at the Bone came out, it was high on my TBR. It did not disappoint.
The story is a simple one – it skips through time, teasing out the family connections of a young girl, her parents and their parents. It looks at the difficult circumstances they had to navigate, the social constraints they lived with and the decisions they had to make. But more than that, it looks at the effects each of these decisions had on them and how they dealt with them. None had easy lives. And their relationships with one another are complex and often strained. And yet they are irrevocably a family, navigating all of these things without ever managing to fully extricate themselves from their shared histories.
The plot is small. Things happen, but none of them are revelations in and of themselves. What Woodson brings to her work is her amazing ability with words. She knows how to write sparingly, and place each word and phrase with a precision that evokes a strong emotional reaction in the reader. At least, it does in this reader. It hardly matters her subject matter or the story she wants to tell. She could talk about what she had for breakfast and give it shape, depth and delicacy.
It’s a short book, and you could likely read it in a day – or even a sitting. But I found that the impact it had on me belied its short page count. Not only did the characters feel real (if not always likable), but Woodson’s choice of representation and explorations of class, identity and race brought a lot of important and timely elements to the work. This particular manner of addressing issues such as these is one I find particularly effective because they occur naturally as part of the landscape of the story rather than feeling like the story was forced in around those issues.
I don’t think everyone will love this book as much as I did. For some there may not be enough of a plot. Others may dislike that it starts in the present and works backwards, thus giving away the “ending.” Others may find it a bit too poetic and lyrical. But for me, this navigated a balance that I found satisfying and rewarding. If nothing else, I’d recommend giving it a try. You might find yourself as transfixed by it as I was.
Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson’s taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her own ceremony– a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives–even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be. – Goodreads
Book Title: Red at the Bone
Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Series: No
Edition: Hardback
Published By: Riverhead Books
Released: September 17, 2019
Genre: Fiction, Family
Pages: 196
Date Read: February 9-10, 2020
Rating: 9/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.02/5 (21,131 ratings)
I love everything that Woodson writes. I think she packs quite a punch with few words!