I wasn't even planning to read this one. I had read Tayari Jones's An American Marriage and loved it. But then the thought of reading her debut never crossed my mind till the time I read Deepa Annapara's Djinn patrol on the purple line. I read her interviews and in one of them, she had mentioned that she was inspired by Jones's Leaving Atlanta amongst others. It was then I decided that I had to read one more book by Jones.
The book is all about the infamous Atlanta child murders and is written in children's voices. I might sound biased but books written in children's voices are naturally good. Children's worlds are simple and yet very simple but certainly not easy to capture. If an author has done that well, half a job is done.
Tasha is in grade fifth and her parents are separated. But they come together when the city is gripped with the fear of missing children. Tasha is safe and protected but unfortunately, the boy she began crushing got snatched and so did Rodney, her classmate. While Tasha had loving and protecting father, Rodney is the one with an abusive one. His father doesn't think twice before taking his belt out and beating him black and blue. And more than often he is found thinking that lucky are the ones who have no father at all. And then we have Octavia, a bookish girl living with her mother in a humble house. She is the poorest of all, hence ostracised by fifth-graders.
When the kids started disappearing, her mother decided to send her to her father who lives someplace else. Now the father has a family of his own and Octavia is not really even comfortable around him. But then her working mother had to do it because she couldn't risk losing her.
In a nutshell, the book talks about three kids and their relationship with their dads. Like I mentioned, Jones had done a good job capturing their little world.
Read it to know what it meant to be black kids in a dangerous American town.
The book is all about the infamous Atlanta child murders and is written in children's voices. I might sound biased but books written in children's voices are naturally good. Children's worlds are simple and yet very simple but certainly not easy to capture. If an author has done that well, half a job is done.
Tasha is in grade fifth and her parents are separated. But they come together when the city is gripped with the fear of missing children. Tasha is safe and protected but unfortunately, the boy she began crushing got snatched and so did Rodney, her classmate. While Tasha had loving and protecting father, Rodney is the one with an abusive one. His father doesn't think twice before taking his belt out and beating him black and blue. And more than often he is found thinking that lucky are the ones who have no father at all. And then we have Octavia, a bookish girl living with her mother in a humble house. She is the poorest of all, hence ostracised by fifth-graders.
When the kids started disappearing, her mother decided to send her to her father who lives someplace else. Now the father has a family of his own and Octavia is not really even comfortable around him. But then her working mother had to do it because she couldn't risk losing her.
In a nutshell, the book talks about three kids and their relationship with their dads. Like I mentioned, Jones had done a good job capturing their little world.
Read it to know what it meant to be black kids in a dangerous American town.
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