Reviews

I'm putting this one down, too. It's not at all a bad book--in fact, in many ways, it's an excellent book. But it's slowly paced and character driven, and once I stopped listening for a while I couldn't really get back into it. I knew I was done for when I got really, really excited that I only had an hour left in the audiobook, and then I realized that I was only finished with part one and had another six hours to go. I just couldn't do it. I actually think that the prolonged love scene between Ida and Vivaldo really did me in. For the love of god, Baldwin, enough is enough. She's beautiful. And twenty minutes later, she's still beautiful. And I'm just bored.

I'm sure that someday I will pick this up in a hard copy and finish it. But not anytime soon.

iriz_viriz's review against another edition

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medium-paced

3.5

pnwbibliophile's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Baldwin is a monolith of Black and Queer literature. His work warrants a read simply because he led US society to consider sexuality, racism, and interracial relationships in his novels at a time where these were contentious topics to much of the public. I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into the artistic community of Harlem/NYC at the time. The dialogue was also brimming with immersive colloquialisms and AAVE, which Baldwin captured brilliantly.

This was a fairly brutal novel and I didn’t love it, but I do appreciate it. Baldwin existed in a different time. Though it’s difficult to read the misogyny in this book, Baldwin was born decades before the Women’s Rights Movement while I was born decades after with the privilege of it’s lessons. While I was put off by all the violence and mysogynistic language inflicted on the female characters, this felt like an accurate portrait of New York City in the 1950s, even if my modern sensibilities elicited red flags left and right viewing a more flawed US on the cusp of the Civil Rights Era. It’s possible to not love something and still gain meaningful insights from it.

I’ll also be honest and say that I only passively engaged with this audiobook and zoned out for much of the last third so perhaps missed some things. This isn’t so much because Baldwin is a bad writer but because I often struggle to connect with literature pre-1970s. Glad I read it but would not read it again.

jaspevig's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

4.5

melofrank's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

beansrowning's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It's not really up my alley as a romance-driven novel (and as cis-gendered white male), but as a fan of Baldwin I read it with no prior research.

Some of the themes were particularly challenging, bordering on the misogynistic. I think some of these more shocking depictions work well because they force the reader to consider the trials and tribulations of Rufus in the context of his life and the realities of a black man living in those times, and I found that my initial opinion had shifted as I read on, a great signal of a thought provoking novel.

Unfortunately, there is still relevance today concerning white liberalism and LGBTQ acceptance.

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