The Turner House

by Angela Flournoy

Overview

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

A powerful, timely debut, The Turner House marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family.

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and shapes—their family’s future.

Praised by Ayana Mathis as “utterly moving” and “un-putdownable,” The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It’s a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544303201
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	356
Sales rank:	757,618
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

ANGELA FLOURNOY is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Southern California. Her fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, and she has written for the New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa and Trinity Washington University. She was raised by a mother from Los Angeles and a father from Detroit.

Read an Excerpt

Trouble in the Big Room
 
The eldest six of Francis and Viola Turner’s thirteen children claimed that the big room of the house on Yarrow Street was haunted for at least one night. A ghost — a haint, if you will — tried to pull Cha-Cha out of the big room’s second-story window.
       The big room was not, in actuality, very big. Could hardly be considered a room. For some other family it might have made a decent storage closet, or a mother’s cramped sewing room. For the Turners it became the only single-occupancy bedroom in their overcrowded house. A rare and coveted space.
       In the summer of 1958, Cha-Cha, the eldest child at fourteen years, was in the throes of a gangly-legged, croaky-voiced adolescence. Smelling himself, Viola called it. Tired of sharing a bed with younger brothers who peed and kicked and drooled and blanket-hogged, Cha-Cha woke up one evening, untangled himself from his brothers’ errant limbs, and stumbled into the whatnot closet across the hall. He slept on the floor, curled up with his back against dusty boxes, and started a tradition. From then on, when one Turner child got grown and gone, as Francis described it, the next eldest child crossed the threshold into the big room.
       The haunting, according to the older children, occurred during the very same summer that the big room became a bedroom. Lonnie, the youngest child then, was the first to witness the haint’s attack. He’d just begun visiting the bathroom alone and was headed there when he had the opportunity to save his brother’s life.
       Three-year-olds are of a tenuous reliability, but to this day Lonnie recalls the form of a pale-hued young man lifting Cha-Cha by his pajama collar out of the bed and toward the narrow window. Back then a majority of the homeowners in that part of Detroit’s east side were still white, and the street had no empty lots.
       “Cha-Cha’s sneakin out! Cha-Cha’s sneakin out with a white boy!” Lonnie sang. He stamped his little feet on the floorboards.
       Soon Quincy and Russell spilled into the hallway. They saw Cha-Cha, all elbows and fists, swinging at the haint. It had let go of Cha-Cha’s collar and was now on the defensive. Quincy would later insist that the haint emitted a blue, electric-looking light, and each time Cha-Cha’s fists connected with its body the entire thing flickered like a faulty lamp.
       Seven-year-old Russell fainted. Little Lonnie stood transfixed, a pool of urine at his feet, his eyes open wide. Quincy banged on his parents’ locked bedroom door. Viola and Francis Turner were not in the habit of waking up to tend to ordinary child nightmares or bed-wetting kerfuffles.
       Francey, the eldest girl at twelve, burst into the crowded hallway just as Cha-Cha was giving the haint his worst. She would later say the haint’s skin had a jellyfish-like translucency, and the pupils of its eyes were huge, dark disks.
       “Let him go, and run, Cha-Cha!” Francey said.
       “He ain’t runnin me outta here,” Cha-Cha yelled back.
       With the exception of Lonnie, who had been crying, the four Turner children in the hallway fell silent. They’d heard plenty of tales of mischievous haints from their cousins Down South — they pushed people into wells, made hanged men dance in midair — so it did not follow that a spirit from the other side would have to spend several minutes fighting off a territorial fourteen-year-old.
       Francey possessed an aptitude for levelheadedness in the face of crisis. She decided she’d seen enough of this paranormal beat-down. She marched into Cha-Cha’s room, grabbed her brother by his stretched-out collar, and dragged him into the hall. She slammed the big-room door behind them and pulled Cha-Cha to the floor. They landed in Lonnie’s piss.
       “That haint tried to run me outta the room,” Cha-Cha said. He wore the indignant look — eyebrows raised, lips parted — of someone who has suffered an unbearable affront.
       “There ain’t no haints in Detroit,” Francis Turner said. His children jerked at the sound of his voice. That was how he existed in their lives: suddenly there, on his own time, his quiet authority augmenting the air in a room. He stepped over their skinny brown legs and opened the big room’s door.
       Francis Turner called Cha-Cha into the room.
       The window was open, and the beige sheets from Cha-Cha’s bed hung over the sill.
       “Look under the bed.”
       Cha-Cha looked.
       “Behind the dresser.”
       Nothing there.
       “Put them sheets back where they belong.”
       Cha-Cha obliged. He felt his father’s eyes on him as he worked. When he finished, he sat down on the bed, unprompted, and rubbed his neck. Francis Turner sat next to him.
       “Ain’t no haints in Detroit, son.” He did not look at Cha-Cha.
       “It tried to run me outta the room.”
       “I don’t know what all happened, but it wasn’t that.”
       Cha-Cha opened his mouth, then closed it.
       “If you ain’t grown enough to sleep by yourself, I suggest you move on back across the hall.”
       Francis Turner stood up to go, faced his son. He reached for Cha-Cha’s collar, pulled it open, and put his index finger to the line of irritated skin below the Adam’s apple. For a moment Cha-Cha saw the specter of true panic in his father’s eyes, then Francis’s face settled into an ambivalent frown.
       “That’ll be gone in a day or two,” he said.
       In the hallway the other children stood lined up against the wall. Marlene, child number five and a bit sickly, had finally come out of the girls’ room.
       “Francey and Quincy, clean up Lonnie’s mess, and all y’all best go to sleep. I don’t wanna hear nobody talkin about they’re tired come morning.”
       Francis Turner closed his bedroom door.
       The mess was cleaned up, but no one, not even little Lonnie, slept in the right bed that night. How could they, with the window curtains puffing out and sucking in like gauzy lungs in the breeze? The children crowded into Cha-Cha’s room — a privileged first visit for most of them — and retold versions of the night’s events. There were many disagreements about the haint’s appearance, and whether it had said anything during the tussle with Cha-Cha. Quincy claimed the thing had winked at him as he stood in the hallway, which meant that the big room should be his. Francey said that haints didn’t have eyelids, so it couldn’t have winked at all. Marlene insisted that she’d been in the hall with the rest of them throughout the ordeal, but everyone teased her for showing up late for the show.
       In the end the only thing agreed upon was that the haint was real, and that living with it was the price one had to pay for having the big room. Everyone, Cha-Cha included, thought the worry was worth it.
       Like hand-me-down clothes, the legacy of the haint faded as the years went by. For a few years the haint’s appearance and Cha-Cha’s triumph over it remained an indisputable, evergreen truth. It didn’t matter that no subsequent resident of the big room had a night to rival Cha-Cha’s, or that none of them ever admitted to hearing so much as a tap on the window during their times there. The original event was so remarkable that it did not require repetition. Cha-Cha took on an elevated status among the first six children; he had landed a punch on a haint and was somehow still breathing. But with each additional child who came along the story lost some of its luster. By the time it reached Lelah, the thirteenth and final Turner child, Francis Turner’s five-word rebuttal, “Ain’t no haints in Detroit,” was more famous within the family than the story behind it. It first gained a place in the Turner lexicon as a way to refute a claim, especially one that very well might be true — a signal of the speaker’s refusal to discuss the matter further. The first six, confident that Francis Turner secretly believed in the haint’s existence, popularized this usage.
By Lelah’s youth, the phrase had mutated into an accusation of leg pulling:
       “Daddy said if I get an A in Mrs. Paulson’s, he’d let me come on his truckin trip to Oregon.”
       “Or-e-gone? Come on, man. Ain’t no haints in Detroit.”

Interviews

A Toehold on the Dream: Angela Flournoy and Tayari Jones in Conversation

Looking back at the life of a Detroit family over half a century of change, Angela Flournoy's The Turner House brilliantly melds the history of a single household with the changing fortunes of an American city. Her engrossing debut has not only been named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection but was recently included on the Fiction Long List for the 2015 National Book Awards.

As part of this summer's Harlem Book Festival, Flournoy was joined on stage at Barnes & Noble's Upper West Side Manhattan location by Tayari Jones, author of three novels, including 2011's acclaimed Silver Sparrow. The Village Voice said: "Tayari Jones is fast defining black middle class Atlanta the way that Cheever did for Westchester." Her fourth novel, Dear History, is forthcoming.

In a wide-ranging exchange, two of the most exciting writers of our era discussed The Turner House; what it means to come from Detroit; the culture of gambling; the haunting legacies of a family's past; and how an artist and storyteller grapples with the burning issues of the moment. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Tayari Jones: When I was given the galley of this book I was eager to read it, because it's set in Detroit. I have a theory that if you sit down and talk to any black person long enough, Detroit is going to come up in the conversation. I've noticed that we have Detroiters in the house who will attest that Detroit seems to be the center of the black universe.

I am curious as to how did you, a California girl, end up writing such an amazing novel about Detroit?

Angela Flournoy: Well, I think one of the reasons you talk to a lot of black people all over the country and Detroit comes up is because Detroit was one of the big hubs during the Great Migration, and after the decline of industry, a lot of people scattered elsewhere to the coasts. So you're probably meeting people (I know I did on my book tour) who are from Detroit.

But me personally: My dad was from Detroit, and most of his family is still in Detroit. So growing up, my grandparents lived in Detroit, on the east side of Detroit, and I would visit the house that my father grew up in. I was always very interested in that place and sort of the very kind of emotional and visceral relationships that people who I knew from Detroit had with that city. Even if they hadn't lived there for thirty years, they're very proud about their city, and defensive — sometimes — about their city.

The last time I visited before I started writing the novel was in 2009, and no one was living in the house, but my uncles were still keeping the house in pristine condition. I didn't really know why. It's one of the most depopulated areas of the city. There were no indicators that things were sort of going to turn around for that neighborhood. And from there, I just started to think: What does it mean, especially for that generation, my grandparents' generation of black people who were first-generation homeowners? What does it mean to have the house? What does it mean in terms of family? That's sort of where the beginning of the novel came from.

TJ: You talk about houses, and the title of the book is The Turner House. I'm from Atlanta, and I've recently moved to New York, and so now, like everyone in New York, I am kind of obsessed with houses, real estate, where you live, how you live. One thing I'm really thinking about is the significance of home ownership — what that means in an urban setting, what that means to African Americans. Can you talk a little bit about the physical house from which you take the title? What is a house? What is the difference between a house and a home? Are they the same thing? How does it work for you? And how does it work in this novel?

AF: It's interesting, because I think that it's changing, sort of what a house means. Especially my generation being the sort of post-recession — or sort of during-recession — generation, the way that they view home ownership is something that they always thought they would sort of be able to aspire to and attain, but maybe they won't be able to, not as quickly. There is a lot more emphasis on home than there is on the actual house — a home being a base where your family has more than a specific landmark. Certainly, for the generation in this novel, more my parents' generation and their parents, I think I call the house "the family's coat of arms." The house itself is a symbol of family unity, and it's a symbol of progress. They came from the South, they worked these jobs, and they got this house — it's a symbol of a toehold in the American Dream.

TJ: What does it mean that so many people are losing their houses?

AF: I think it means a lot of different things. Certainly what I think it means as far as macro scale: I think it means that we're seeing the tail end of a lot of very not-very-great policy, urban policy, as far as housing discrimination was concerned, and those wrongs have never been righted. On a micro scale: When I was on book tour, I met people who were very emotional about the heavy stories about the homes that they've lost, and they were sort of ashamed and they felt really guilty. "We had to get rid of mom's house," wherever it was, and there was a big feeling of shame attached to that. I try to tell people (and I do believe this) that ultimately, that house still served a purpose.

The house that my father grew up in — he is one of thirteen children — it raised thirteen upstanding citizens and a generation after that, and it's part of the reason I'm even here, because that house was like a haven for my father in the community he was in. So I think that people should certainly not be ashamed. I can understand the frustration, but I think that sometimes especially black folks are a little hard on ourselves. We should still be proud of the work that it took to have that house, even if it's not something that we can hold on to forever.

TJ: I'm so glad that you said that. Part of the healing work of this book, I think, is how you take on a city like Detroit. Is there such a thing as poverty porn? Does that exist? You can go and click on slide shows with, "Look how horrible Detroit is," and you click, and each image is worse than the last. But I feel like even though the house is underwater, etc., you still capture the pleasure of people's everyday lives, as they live their lives in Detroit or wherever they are, or as they're migrating.

I want to ask you one question from the book: What does it mean when you say, "ain't no haints in Detroit."

AF: One of the characters, the eldest son, Cha-Cha, he believes that he has seen a ghost — a "haint." Haint is the only word he knows for this ghost. He's heard stories from his parents and from his cousins down south about haints. They're the only ghosts he knows. It's sort of the inciting event of the novel, that he has this fight with the ghost. He's the oldest, fourteen. So everyone younger than him are not reliable witnesses, obviously. They're children. So they're saying, "Yeah, we saw the ghost; it was there." But their father, Francis Turner, he is very adamant about the fact that there are not haints in Detroit. He does not say that haints don't exist. He says, "There ain't no haints in Detroit." They are two different things.

For me, in the early drafts, it was really just a joke. I don't know where it came from. I like sort of internal rhyming. But in later drafts, as I thought more about Francis and particularly what he was leaving behind in Arkansas, it became: The things that we're leaving in the South, the things that we're sort of running away from, they're not supposed to be able to follow us here. They're supposed to stay there.

TJ: I have to say, you had me on that — this ghost is in the house, the kids are all fighting. It's like thirteen kids, a gang of kids, and they're all fighting this mysterious blue ghost, and the father comes in and the kids are like, "There was a ghost; it tried to get Cha-Cha." And the dad's like, "No. Ain't no haints in Detroit." And he leaves. He did not come all the way up here to be dealing with the haints and all — nobody comes all the way the hell to Detroit, thirteen kids, all these jobs, to have a haint in the house.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But in some ways it seems like kind of the futility of chasing the American Dream. There are haints in Detroit, there are haints in New York, there are haints in California. I think the haints are this thing that's kind of like the glass ceiling that happens in America — it's the haint.

With this novel going from the past to the future, there are haints all the way through. So in your reading, from looking at Detroit past to Detroit present, to New York at this moment, what has changed and what has not?

AF: One of the things that the characters in this book struggle with is asking for help in sort of dealing with their demons — that's one of the things I think or I hope is changing, particularly in my family, and I hope in more black families.. I think it changes in the book, and it certainly changed as far as us as a country and the American Dream. I don't know, everybody might go to sleep . . .

But I certainly think that one of the things that we see sort of happening again, we're obviously living in a moment of — I wouldn't say it's a moment of increased violence against black people, because it's always been there — but it's certainly a moment of increased visibility and awareness of it.

I think one thing that has changed is people's willingness to acknowledge that there are patterns. I think that part of the reason why all Francis wants to say is "Ain't no haints in Detroit" is because he doesn't want to talk about the way that some of the baggage he's taken with him is still with him. If you're not willing to talk about it, things can't really change. I think that where we are now, there are at least more people speaking up and willing to say, "This is systemic; this is a pattern." I think that's the first step. One of the things that I wanted to do in the book is really have characters who finally acknowledge that this is actually an issue; it's not a one-time thing, it's not a one-off thing, but this is something I need to address.

TJ: I was very surprised to see a woman struggling with gambling addiction in your novel. I don't think I've ever seen it anywhere. I see addiction a lot in fiction, but not gendered in this particular way. How was it to write that? And what does it mean to you?

AF: It's funny, because I never thought about the gender before. Not once did I ever think about her being a woman and being in a casino all the time. My sister is not a gambler . . . I mean, she does gamble; she's not addicted. But my sister plays poker a lot. She's very good at it. She goes to these tournaments, and she's not the only woman. But I never even thought about it. Because my sister does a lot of things — she's an engineer — where she's the only woman.

I was fascinated with kind of the specific rituals that people have when they gamble. I was sitting and I was really thinking about what would be Lehla's game. Would it be the slots? Or would it be roulette? I went to — there's a kind of depressing place called the Riverside Casino . . .

TJ: All casinos are depressing.

AF: Lelah has been there. She's been to the Riverside Casino. They have seafood on Fridays, and the crab legs are like radioactive orange — it's scary. But you sit there, and you start to see the relationships that people who come there often have with each other, and the moments they're willing to sort of be convivial and talk to people, and moments when they're very closed-off and they're very into their procedures and their routine.

TJ: She's borderline homeless when she's going in the casino. It's like the way these casinos are made to try to take your last money in the hopes that you won't need money again. And this ties in with all the ways that the people in the book are trying to get it together when they don't really have a lot of options.

But I have one question, speaking of getting it together. It's very clear to me that you had it all together. Congratulations on this first book.

AF: Thank you.

TJ: What words of advice or encouragement would you have for people who want to be sitting up here themselves, who want to write their first book?

AF: Well, first off, I would say, don't take the C train if you're coming from Bed-Stuy. You might be late! Then you won't be sitting up here talking about this story!

To be serious: We're living in an age of, I would say, professional degrees, and people feel that if they don't have, you know, an MFA, then certain things won't happen for them. What I would say is that no one asks you to write a novel. Even if you get an MFA, nobody asks you to write a novel. It's something I had to remind myself often . . . Because I started to feel like it was a job — three years in and nobody caring — I had to remind myself: This is something I decided to do. This is a story that I felt I had to get out.

I think that my biggest bit of advice would be just to never stop doing that, and remember that Toni Morrison said, "You write the book you want to read." If you don't write that book, then it will never exist. You'll always think about it, and no one else will get to read it. I would have never sort of fathomed that other people would want to read this book as much as they have. Every day that people come to hear me say anything about it is really amazing. But the first step, and I think the most important one is just to remember that you have a story. You have a story that needs to be told, and everything else comes after that. But the story comes first. It doesn't matter sort of where you start, but the story has to come first.

TJ: Three really quick ys or no questions. Do you write every day?

AF: No.

TJ: Do you write in the morning or in the evening?

AF: In the morning, unless I'm really on fire. But mostly early in the morning.

TJ: Computer or writing by hand?

AF: Longhand for the first draft.

TJ: This has nothing to do with anything, but someone interviewed yesterday and asked me this. Michael Jackson or Prince? This is an important question. This is where she's going to reveal her soul. We're all waiting for your soul here.

AF: I have a lot of midwestern love for both of them. When I was younger, I said Michael. I'm getting older, and I am starting to lean towards Prince.

TJ: Is that your final answer?

AF: My final answer is both, but yes. They do different things. Make new friends and keep the old.

TJ: We will end with that skillful evasion.

—September 23, 2015

Editorial Reviews

…an engrossing and remarkably mature first novel…Flournoy's prose is artful without being showy. She takes the time to flesh out the world…In her accretion of resonant details, Flournoy recounts the history of Detroit with more sensitivity than any textbook could…That Flournoy's main characters are black is central to this book, and yet her treatment of that essential fact is never essentializing. Flournoy gets at the universal through the patient observation of one family's particulars. In this assured and memorable novel, she provides the feeling of knowing a family from the inside out, as we would wish to know our own.

The New York Times Book Review - Matthew Thomas

★ 01/05/2015
Flounoy’s debut is a lively, thoroughly engaging family saga with a cast of fully realized characters. Francis and Viola Turner and their 13 children have lived in a house on Detroit’s East Side for more than 50 years. In its prime, Yarrow Street was a comfortable haven for black working-class homeowners. In 2008, after Detroit’s long economic depression, Francis has died and Viola is about to lose the house, the value of which has declined to less than the owed mortgage payments, and the siblings are faced with a difficult decision about the house’s fate. Flournoy focuses on three of the Turner siblings—Cha-Cha, the eldest son, who drove an 18-wheeler carrying Chryslers before an accident took him off the road; Troy, the youngest son, a policeman with an ambitious, illegal plan; and Lelah, the unstable youngest daughter, who has a gambling addiction. In addition to the pressing financial issue regarding their family home, the plot touches on the moral, emotional, marital, and psychological problems that affect the siblings. Flournoy evokes the intricacies of domestic situations and sibling relationships, depicting how each of the Turners’ lives has been shaped by the social history of their generation. She handles time and place with a veteran’s ease as the narrative swings between decades, at times leaping back to the 1940s. A family secret, which involves a “haint” (or ghost) who became Francis’s nemesis—perhaps real, perhaps just a superstition—appears many years later to haunt Cha-Cha. Readers may be reminded of Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, but Flournoy puts her own distinctive stamp on this absorbing narrative. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"The Turner House speeds along like a page-turner. Flournoy’s richly wrought prose and intimate, vivid dialogue make this novel feel like settling deeply into the family armchair. A–." — Entertainment Weekly

"Flournoy's knockout debut is one of those books that should, by rights, be described as the Great American Novel.... The book tells the story of the 13 adult children of Francis and Viola Turner, who must decide what to do with their family house. The characters are fascinating and funny, and anyone who has played a role in the ecosystem of his family life will recognize the joys and challenges that plague the Turners. But perhaps the strongest character is Detroit itself, as it morphs from bustling modern metropolis to a potent symbol of post-industrial decline." — NPR

"An engrossing and remarkably mature first novel...Flournoy’s prose is artful without being showy. She takes the time to flesh out the world.... In her accretion of resonant details, Flournoy recounts the history of Detroit with more sensitivity than any textbook could.... Flournoy gets at the universal through the patient observation of one family’s particulars. In this assured and memorable novel, she provides the feeling of knowing a family from the inside out, as we would wish to know our own." — New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

"Flournoy has written an epic that feels deeply personal.... Flournoy’s finely tuned empathy infuses her characters with a radiant humanity." — O, The Oprah Magazine

"An elegant and assured debut." — Washington Post

"Poignant and timely." — San Francisco Chronicle

"Flournoy’s National Book Award–nominated debut does an incredible job of bringing both a family and a city to vibrant, poignant life." — Buzzfeed, "The 24 Best Fiction Books of 2015"

"A sprawling family history that delves into the Detroit housing crisis and the potential legacies the past holds, Angela Flournoy's first novel will be remembered as the start of a brilliant career." — Bustle, "2015’s 25 Best Books, Fiction Edition"

"Epic, ambitious and strikingly executed, The Turner House is an impressive debut novel. In the grand tradition of family dramas by the late Bebe Moore Campbell, it is lively and entertaining, with subtle humor and engaging voice. Flournoy manages the difficult feat of skillfully telling the stories of 13 children, their parents and accompanying spouses and love interests in an irresistible style. Here we have a deeply satisfying portrayal of relationships among those to whom we, for better or worse, are related by blood." — The Root

"Nobody can take you from joyful to infuriated as fast as your brother or sister. Similarly, the ups and downs of the 13 siblings that populate The Turner House, the first novel by Angela Flournoy, whip from laugh-out-loud to heart-crushing. Still, she proves even bonds that have stretched a mile long have the ability to snap back." — Essence

"With The Turner House, Flournoy has written an utterly unsentimental love story that, rather like the house on Yarrow Street, manages to make room for everyone." — Christian Science Monitor

"A fierce and tender debut novel.... Angela Flournoy is the literary anthropologist of Detroit, not so different from the way a young Philip Roth was the literary anthropologist of Newark." — Paterson Fiction Prize Citation

From the Publisher

11/15/2014
Debut novelist Flournoy limns the fate of African Americans who have seen their hard-won success in reaching the middle class in a single generation blown to bits by our continuing economic malaise. Viola and Frances Turner arrived in Detroit in 1944 as part of the Great Migration and bought a house in 1951, raising 13 children there. Now, ailing, widowed Viola must leave the house, which she discovers is worth a tenth of its mortgage. All her children converge, as past, present, and future collide.

Library Journal

Adenrele Ojo’s narration doesn’t help the listener navigate this sprawling tale of the Turner family, with its 13 children. Focused on Cha-Cha, the eldest, and Lelah, the youngest, the audiobook wends its way through time frames: 1958, when Cha first sees the haint; the present day, when the blighted neighborhood casts a shadow on the family home; and the 1940s, when Francis was part of the Great Migration that established the family in this once prosperous neighborhood. Incongruous pauses in Ojo’s narration and a huge cast of characters lacking distinctive voices challenge the listener’s enjoyment and comprehension. The dialogue, which is in dialect, would have been enhanced by the use of pacing, tone, and inflection to distinguish the speakers. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

MAY 2015 - AudioFile

2015-02-02
A complicated portrait of the modern American family emerges in Flournoy's debut novel.For the 13 Turner siblings, the house on Detroit's East Side isn't just their childhood home. It's also the crux of memories of their dead father and a link among 13 very different adults. But the house has built up debt, their ill mother, Viola, lives elsewhere, and a question hangs—what to do with the Yarrow Street house? As the children debate, the narrative divides into the perspectives of Lelah, Troy and Charlie "Cha Cha" Turner, interspersed with their father's flashbacks of surviving in gritty Detroit 60 years earlier. Cha-Cha, the oldest at 64, drives trucks for Chrysler and is recovering from an accident after a vision of a luminous ghost, which he'd last seen 40 years earlier at Yarrow, caused him to veer off the road. Meanwhile, Lelah has been evicted from her apartment due to a gambling addiction and takes up residence in the now-abandoned house. And Troy, a disillusioned policeman, wants to illegally short sell the house to his sometime girlfriend. As the story progresses, the siblings' dilemmas become increasingly knotty. Lelah's roulette addiction, evocatively described—"the chips looked like candy. Pastel, melt-away things that didn't make sense to save"—worsens; Cha-Cha is visited by the ghost, dredging up ugly childhood memories; and Troy tries to con Viola into selling the house. Flournoy ramps up the suspense until, one night, the three are all drawn to Yarrow Street, leading to a fight with intractable results. Flournoy's strength lies in her meticulous examination of each character's inner life. Lelah, who uses gambling as a balm for her fractured relationship with her daughter, is an especially sympathetic character—she seeks "proof that she could be cherished by someone, if only for a while." Flournoy's writing is precise and sharp, and despite several loose ends—Troy doesn't experience significant emotional change by the book's end, and the house's fate remains unclear—the novel draws readers to the Turner family almost magnetically. A talent to watch.

Kirkus Reviews