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Oprah’s New Book Club Pick: Cynthia Bond’s Ruby
In piercingly lovely prose, Cynthia Bond’s Ruby, Oprah’s latest Book Club 2.0 pick, tells a deeply unsettling, unforgettable story. Ruby Bell is an African American girl raised by white folks in Liberty, a rural community deep in the piney woods of East Texas. For Ruby, Liberty is a place of pain and secrets. The very trees, alive with hoodoo spirits, haunt her.
She has experienced unimaginable horrors at the hands of nearly all the men in her life. As a result, she trusts no one, and she’s given up on hope and happiness. Though she embodies her pastoral surroundings—with “acres of legs carrying her, arms swaying like a loose screen [and] eyes the ink of sky, just before the storm”—she escapes them at the first opportunity. Lusted after by men and hated by women in her oppressive hometown, Ruby leaves to make a life in New York City. But as the novel opens, she’s drawn to the place she struggled to escape.
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A friend’s death brings Ruby back to Liberty. When she returns, it’s 1963, and she’s a sophisticated woman leaning against a bus, a cigarette dangling from her perfectly formed hand. Her waist-hugging red dress and heels clash dramatically with the monochromatic East Texas landscape and shock the conservative folk who inhabit the town. Over time, gossip proliferates, the past bubbles to the surface, and Ruby’s pride melts away. She becomes as gray as the dusty street, a madwoman confronting her ghosts.
Ruby’s beauty remains unchanged in the eyes of one man: Ephram Jennings, a sweet simple boy who has loved Ruby since she was a prideful girl in braids, “the kind of pretty it hurt to look at. Like candy on a sore tooth.” No one in Liberty takes notice of Ephram, though he is kind, gracious, and moves “like a man gliding under water.” But Ruby does. Even when she’s suffering the most, she recognizes Ephram’s goodness.
Ephram loves a woman who has been shriveled and shrunken by devastating abuse. It is only with extreme caution and tenderness that he dares approach her. Theirs is a protracted love story, and as Bond tells it, she weaves past with present, asking readers to confront Ruby’s exquisitely painful memories and persevere in reaching her along with Ephram.
Ruby‘s repeated scenes of sexual violence, pedophilia, and brutal racism are challenging, but in the end, this is an uplifting novel. Bond’s novel makes the case that even madness, even rape, even the systematic oppression of a people, can’t stop women from seeing beauty in the world and from finding consolation in love and in their own strength. Cynthia Bond was a victim of human trafficking when she was a child, and her breathtaking prose, reminiscent of the work of Toni Morrison, is itself a radical assertion that the ugliest human behavior has no power to quash the spirit of a great writer.
Order Ruby now and get ready to discuss this powerful book with your fellow readers.