Wine, Words, and The Darkest Child

It's been a looong time since I've done a book review. And what's funny, I have several of them in blogger draft, but haven't posted them...

But this one, The Darkest Child, is extra special, since it was the first book for Serenity23 and Ms.Blackliterature.com's (Sherri's) inaugural Wine and Words book club meeting.

The meeting was held in Charlotte, NC. Since it's only 3.5-4 hours from Atlanta, DJ Diva and I decided to drive up.

But back to The Darkest Child.

I first heard about this book from one of my Elite Original Oldgirl Critique team members, a fellow chemist "Yo-Yo". I'm always sending her scraps of things that I write and she is good about critiquing them and asking interesting questions. She's always telling me about books she reads and she was so enamored with this one that she brought in her copy for me to read.

I have a whole lot going on right now, so it is increasingly difficult for me to sit down and read. Serenity asked me what I was reading and I told her The Darkest Child. She went out and got it and read it in a day and really enjoyed it, and decided to choose it as the first book for her bookclub meeting.

Now The Darkest Child centers on the life of the Quinn family, a family of 10 children headed up by a single mother, Rozelle Quinn. The story takes place during the sixties in rural Georgia, and is narrated by 13 year old Tangy Mae Quinn, who happens to be the darkest of all of Rozelle's children (Rozelle, who is biracial, has her "white children, indian children, and black children. Rozelle keeps her children in line by all types of abuse, all of it heartless in nature. The children are conflicted, as they do love their mother, but at the same time, desire to have their own lives,and not be under their mother's control. Tangy Mae herself loves school and dreams of furthering her education. To make things worse, much of the story takes place during times of racial discrimation and racial change.

That's the gist of it. It would take me several posts just to run through the plot, because this book had A LOT going on. I counted at least 30 characters in this story, and my biggest problem was keeping everybody straight (ages of characters, who was who, etc.). This is a big issue for me because I read books now for entertainment and stylistic purposes (I take a lot of style notes for use in my own writing an tend to learn something useful for my own writing).

The author does an excellent job with visualization and description, but I and some of the other Wine and Words book club members wished she would have concentrated on one or two situations, as it would have made for a much tighter story. (I counted one at least eight subplots in this novel. There were at least two plotlines that I could tell she could've explored, but it would have stretched the novel out further.)

On a personal level, this book disturbed me because the matriarch was like an extreme version of my own mother. That bothered me, almost to the point of putting the book down. But I had to focus on the fact that it is a story... not MY story. An overall, it was a good story.

As I said earlier, this was the inaugural book for the Wine and Words book club meeting. I drove up for it. I enjoyed myself, and the discussion was top notch, all of what a book club meeting should be. I liked it because it was a small group of people. I am a member of a large book club, and someone as reserved as myself doesn't do well in such settings. (I jut my hand high in the air when I want to say something... not something I care to do). But this was nice. Serenity23 made the BOMB gumbo. And she is a bootleg wine connieseur, i.e., there was MUCH wine flowing!

I disturbed S23 something terrible when I wanted my water served in a wine glass. I did that just to mess with you, chile. (Every once in awhile the LadyLee side of my personality sneaks out, you know).

The food was excellent. Serenity made the BOMB gumbo (gal, you needed some CRABS in THAT!). I made a batch each of my world famous oatmeal walnut raisin cookies and chocolate chip pecan cookies.

I also brought a loaf of french bread...

But...

I didn't realize how much bread I had to have when I visited Charlotte.

Something that I wasn't totally prepared for...

To be continued...