Review by Booklist Review
It's a fine summer evening; Fred Daniels has just gotten paid; and he's happily heading home to his pregnant wife. But Fred is Black, the cops in the squad car are white; they take him to the station and torture him into confessing to a double murder he knows nothing about. Fred manages to escape down a manhole into the sewer system, where he embarks on a feverish underworld quest, experiencing a wave of epiphanies as he burrows into a Black church, a movie theater, a jewelry shop, an insurance office, and an undertaker, each granting him startling new perceptions of the shackles of racism. Alone in the dark fending for himself, Fred revels in his strange freedom and "high pitch of consciousness," feeling that he is an "invisible man." Wright wrote this mythic, crescendo odyssey, this molten tragedy of tyranny and the destruction of a life, at the start of WWII, 10 years before Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man appeared. But despite the resounding success of Native Son, Wright's publisher rejected this lacerating tale. Now, finally, this devastating inquiry into oppression and delusion, this timeless tour de force, emerges in full, the work Wright was most passionate about, as he explains in the profoundly illuminating essay, "Memories of My Grandmother," also published here for the first time. This blazing literary meteor should land in every collection.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The power and pain of Wright's writing are evident in this wrenching novel, which was rejected by his publisher in 1942, shortly after the release of Native Son. Fred Daniels, a Black man who lives in an unidentified American city, is on his way home after a hard day's work for the Wootens, a well-to-do white couple. Before he can reunite with his pregnant wife, Rachel, Daniels is unjustly seized by three white cops for the murder of the Wootens' next-door neighbors. After he's beaten, Daniels signs a confession, naively hoping that doing so will enable him to see Rachel. The cops take him to see her ("No one can say we mistreated him if we let 'im see his old lady, hunh?" one says), and she goes into labor, necessitating a rush to the hospital, which provides an opportunity for Daniels to escape. From that point forward, Daniels hides out in the sewers. Wright makes the impact of racist policing palpable as the story builds to a gut-punch ending, and the inclusion of his essay "Memories of My Grandmother" illuminates his inspiration for the book. This nightmarish tale of racist terror resonates. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full. Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright's classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who's arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, "collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks." But Fred's deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright's publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred's treatment by the police "unbearable." That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is "rather muted," emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright's grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an "exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry") and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world. A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright's best-known work. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
