My Friends: A Novel
by Hisham Matar
Profoundly moving (8/3/2024)
This novel was a gripping read and I understand now better than ever the heartbreaking tragedy of exile. I am impressed by the author’s skill at developing a compelling, well-paced plot, believable and sympathetic characters, and a theme all too relevant to our world.
Take My Hand
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Never forget... (8/30/2021)
As in many other fine novels about the south, the importance of remembering the past is stressed in Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez; in the very first paragraph, the narrator describes her story as "a reminder to never forget." And that story is a horrific one, made more appalling by the fact that it is based in truth—as any reader who reads the jacket material will know beforehand.
Moving between 2016 and 1973, first person narrator Civil Townsend tells the story of an experience some fifty years in her past that continues to haunt her life and to influence every decision she makes. The setting is Montgomery, Alabama, 1973, a time and place still steeped in prejudice and racial injustice. Civil is a young black nurse stepping into her first job at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, a Federal agency whose clients were mostly from poor black families.
The setting created by Perkins-Valdez is remarkable for its verisimilitude. A native Montgomerian myself, I was quickly drawn back to 1973, to a Montgomery inhabited by black families, many of them impoverished, a few relatively affluent; and by white people, many motivated by ingrained, often paternalistic, racism, others by idealistic passion for bringing real change to Alabama. The well-paced narrative moving between past and present kept me immersed in the unfolding events and in the development of Civil's character as she struggled to deal with them. And the theme of the destroying presence of racial and sexual injustice and its enduring impact on those caught up in it is as timely now as it was forty-eight years ago.
Take My Hand should be read and appreciated and remembered, not only because it is based on a significant landmark case that advanced women's fight for the right to control their own bodies, but also because it is a well written, compelling, highly readable novel. Anyone who enjoys reading southern fiction, reading about the civil rights movement and/or the women's movement, or just reading a good novel with strong character development and a heartrending plot should immediately add Take My Hand to their TBR.
 (1).gif)
