God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

Lula Ann Bridewell’s problems began at birth when her blue-black skin shocked and horrified her light-skinned parents. Ultimately her father deserted the family and her mother, while providing basic care, could hardly bear to touch or even look at her. Lula Ann survived her tough childhood and grew into a strikingly beautiful woman whose black skin and eyes were her most admired features. Renaming herself Bride, she became a successful business woman. However, personal happiness still eluded her. She remained estranged from her mother. Her efforts to make amends for a childhood offense ended in pain and violence. Her closest friend was after her job. And most painfully, her true love, Booker, disappeared from her life, giving her only the mysterious explanation of, “You not the woman I want.” However, Bride does not give up so easily. Using the slightest of clues, she traces the whereabouts of someone, Q. Olive, who might know where Booker is. On a road trip to find Q. Olive (and perhaps Booker), Bride runs into some trouble and, consequently, meets some salt-of-the-earth people who assist her on her journey. God Help the Child by Nobel Prize winning author, Toni Morrison, pits violence and the wide-spread damage of child abuse against the resilience and decency of human beings.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste NG

Leo Tolstoy wrote that, “…each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Lee family, living in a small town in Ohio during the 1970s, is a good example of this. Their unhappiness, which had driven middle child Lydia to disappear on a summer night, involved none of the usual components of the dysfunctional family. There was no alcoholism, drug abuse, physical violence, mental illness, poverty or infidelity. There was simply a lack of communication.

The parents, James and Marilyn, were disappointed with their lives. Marilyn had planned to defy her mother’s expectations for her, perfect wife and homemaker, by becoming one of the few women of the 1950’s to qualify for medical school. James, the son of Chinese immigrants, striving to be accepted as a true American, became a professor who taught a class focusing on the American cowboy. Unfortunately, Marilyn’s plans for medical school were disrupted by an unexpected pregnancy. And the academic community put little value on James’ area of expertise. He was viewed as odd and was offered only one teaching position.

So they transferred their ambitions to their children, particularly Lydia. Marilyn, making the same mistake her own mother had made, assumed that Lydia wanted what she had wanted, medical school. And James pushed her into a tortured social life which had her lurking at the edges of the gym at school dances and pretending to talk to friends on the telephone. Meanwhile they ignored their other two children, Nath and Hannah, whose real interests and abilities seemed insignificant in comparison to those imagined for Lydia.

The family imploded after Lydia’s disappearance, shortly after her sixteenth birthday. Rage and recrimination from past slights and injuries came to the surface and drove the family members apart. It seemed a point of no return had been reached. Only quiet and observant Hannah, who knew some of Lydia’s secrets, could help the others come to terms with what had happened.

Check out a copy of Everything I Never Told You @ the library!