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katieinca's review against another edition
4.0
This terrific book is, in this order:
1) Historical fiction with non-white POV (and oh, what a nice change that is) 2) urban fantasy 3) a love story (but probably not a romance).
It's much less about vaudeville & movies than I would have guessed from its blurb, and all about these characters, their journey (literal and figurative), and the world they live in.
It's crazy well researched, but you probably wouldn't know that unless you happened to be reading something like [b:The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration|8171378|The Warmth of Other Suns The Epic Story of America's Great Migration|Isabel Wilkerson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433354252s/8171378.jpg|13341052] at the same time (which I was).
I was expecting something kind of like an answer to my problems with The Night Circus, which left me cold. Its not that, which is juts peachy. It could use a good editor in spots. But all around, definitely a little gem of a book that ought to have more readers.
1) Historical fiction with non-white POV (and oh, what a nice change that is) 2) urban fantasy 3) a love story (but probably not a romance).
It's much less about vaudeville & movies than I would have guessed from its blurb, and all about these characters, their journey (literal and figurative), and the world they live in.
It's crazy well researched, but you probably wouldn't know that unless you happened to be reading something like [b:The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration|8171378|The Warmth of Other Suns The Epic Story of America's Great Migration|Isabel Wilkerson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433354252s/8171378.jpg|13341052] at the same time (which I was).
I was expecting something kind of like an answer to my problems with The Night Circus, which left me cold. Its not that, which is juts peachy. It could use a good editor in spots. But all around, definitely a little gem of a book that ought to have more readers.
dale_in_va's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-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
5.0
The audiobook had a wonderful epilogue from the Author, explaining how she came about this speculative fiction project. I found myself rooting for Redwood and Aiden throughout the book. I really enjoyed the journey.
I found myself wondering why this was considered speculative fiction rather than historical fiction, and it is sad to say, that it is difficult to imagine someone like Redwood, Iris or Aiden for that matter living long enough to have their adventures here i the US during that time period. The pretty much explain it in the book.. in real life, whites would have lynched, murdered, gettoize, set fire too, basically destroyed anything they tried to create. So, it is nice to enter a fantasy world where a person of color can have agency.
I found myself wondering why this was considered speculative fiction rather than historical fiction, and it is sad to say, that it is difficult to imagine someone like Redwood, Iris or Aiden for that matter living long enough to have their adventures here i the US during that time period. The pretty much explain it in the book.. in real life, whites would have lynched, murdered, gettoize, set fire too, basically destroyed anything they tried to create. So, it is nice to enter a fantasy world where a person of color can have agency.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Rape, and Racism
Moderate: Death of parent, Rape, Incest, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Violence
Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Physical abuse, and Gaslighting
The book has very few white main characters and is writting in vernacular english.acmfox's review
emotional
informative
slow-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
5.0
Really enjoyed this book. Gave me a glimpse into lives that I could not have imagined.
zlibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
Crossing time, historical memory, and structures of race, gender, and society with seven-league boots, Hairston's remarkable novel is a thought-provoking pleasure for both Hairston admirers and those new to her work. Redwood, the smart, empathetic protagonist and Hairston's elegant prose carry the reader through an adventurous tale rich with historical and social complexity. Archivists, historians, librarians, blues enthusiasts and readers with related interests will find much to love in this book as Hairston grants early 20th-century historical and technological developments a life far beyond the ordinary. This imaginative novel engages the intellect, the imagination, and the heart.
drlisak's review against another edition
4.0
While I may have a slight bias as Andrea Hairston was a former professor of mine, I still found this book a beautiful, rich, evocative and powerful story. The book merges together everything I’ve loved–theatre, women’s stories, historical research, social issues, culture and race. In other words, this amazing former professor has written the book I can only dream of writing. She has done it with powerful imagery, a true understanding of character, and the ability to bring her words to life.
kblincoln's review against another edition
5.0
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I first cracked open Redwood and Wildfire. I was ill prepared for this densely woven, free-spirited kind of writing mixing a horrific lynching, a girl who can catch a hurricane in her hand, stories from an irish/seminole drunkard's life, cooning in Chicago vaudeville, and the kindness of a country doctor lending poetry books to white trash and coloreds in rural Georgia.
Running through the prose is the pulsing, visceral awareness of body; skin, color, breath, and blood, in all the characters.
We join Redwood Phipps as she loses her mother, grows up in the Georgia swamps as a colored hoodoo gal in a town where that makes her feared by all, and dances around half-Irish/half-Seminole Aidan who tries to make his own place in the world through a fog of haint-haunting and alcohol.
Both travel to Chicago where they find their own places as entertainers.
This is not an easy book to read; it's definitely for adults. You can't sit down and gulp it. The narrative is a bit opaque sometimes, either due to dialect or the author's fancy, I don't know, but even when the story takes us hard places, you can't give up on Redwood or Aidan or any of their hard-living and hard-used friends.
You read to pass through the hard times, to shake your fist at the boneyard baron and do a little hoodoo healing on yourself, no matter your own color or background.
I felt as if someone had taken The Color Purple and mixed it with some of the sad-tinged wonder of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude as I read Redwood and Aidan's tale.
Definitely something you should read, but only if you're emotionally prepared.
This Book's Snack Rating: A handful of pistachios for the sometimes-painful shell of race, violence, and discrimination you crack to get to the honey-sweet nut of Aidan and Redwood's magic inside.
Running through the prose is the pulsing, visceral awareness of body; skin, color, breath, and blood, in all the characters.
We join Redwood Phipps as she loses her mother, grows up in the Georgia swamps as a colored hoodoo gal in a town where that makes her feared by all, and dances around half-Irish/half-Seminole Aidan who tries to make his own place in the world through a fog of haint-haunting and alcohol.
Both travel to Chicago where they find their own places as entertainers.
This is not an easy book to read; it's definitely for adults. You can't sit down and gulp it. The narrative is a bit opaque sometimes, either due to dialect or the author's fancy, I don't know, but even when the story takes us hard places, you can't give up on Redwood or Aidan or any of their hard-living and hard-used friends.
You read to pass through the hard times, to shake your fist at the boneyard baron and do a little hoodoo healing on yourself, no matter your own color or background.
I felt as if someone had taken The Color Purple and mixed it with some of the sad-tinged wonder of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude as I read Redwood and Aidan's tale.
Definitely something you should read, but only if you're emotionally prepared.
This Book's Snack Rating: A handful of pistachios for the sometimes-painful shell of race, violence, and discrimination you crack to get to the honey-sweet nut of Aidan and Redwood's magic inside.
disneydamsel1's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-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? No
2.5
Parts of this book were quite amazing. It is a dark read, but it has a lot of insight into cultural issues that aren't always represented. I liked the second half of the book more than the first.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Hate crime, and Racism
Moderate: Alcoholism
missprint_'s review against another edition
2.0
This could have been good but it painfully missed the mark in a lot of ways. Also I feel like the jacket copy promised one thing and the book delivered something else entirely.
First: There is singing. Which the narrator actually sings in the audiobook which is just too much.
Second: Redwood starts as 11 and ages up through story (she was 16 when I finally said enough and stopped reading) and Aidan (Wildfire) is 20something. We got a whole minute of his character basically thinking about how hot Redwood is and how much trouble he’d be in if anyone knew that and just … no. The jacket pretty clearly markets them as a pair but aside from the age difference (which is significant particularly considering that Redwood is an actual child at the start of the book) Aidan is married at least twice and they are "friends" which we see conveyed with a total of two conversations in the first 20% of the book including one magical time travel trip to Chicago because sure.
Third: Almost every description of a female character spends time discussing the character’s breasts. At length. While calling them “tiddies.” I looked up in an online preview and thought it was saying there were seventeen instances in the book total of the word but having made it through 20% I think that was actually just the number of instances IN THE PREVIEW.
I just cannot.
First: There is singing. Which the narrator actually sings in the audiobook which is just too much.
Second: Redwood starts as 11 and ages up through story (she was 16 when I finally said enough and stopped reading) and Aidan (Wildfire) is 20something. We got a whole minute of his character basically thinking about how hot Redwood is and how much trouble he’d be in if anyone knew that and just … no. The jacket pretty clearly markets them as a pair but aside from the age difference (which is significant particularly considering that Redwood is an actual child at the start of the book) Aidan is married at least twice and they are "friends" which we see conveyed with a total of two conversations in the first 20% of the book including one magical time travel trip to Chicago because sure.
Third: Almost every description of a female character spends time discussing the character’s breasts. At length. While calling them “tiddies.” I looked up in an online preview and thought it was saying there were seventeen instances in the book total of the word but having made it through 20% I think that was actually just the number of instances IN THE PREVIEW.
I just cannot.
jsmithborne's review against another edition
5.0
Really liking this book. Excited that I will have read this year's Tiptree winner BEFORE Wiscon for a change!