Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Harper (This Side of Providence) returns with a riveting exploration of an Afro-Cuban family's secrets. Talented pianist Jenry Castillo leaves Miami for Brown University on a scholarship. In addition to pursuing his passion for music, he's determined to learn more about the life of Jasper Patterson, whom his mother, Marisa, met while she was at Brown decades earlier, and who died shortly after Jenry was born. Marisa has told Jenry that Jasper was his father, and that he was a famous ballet dancer. When Jenry meets Jasper's father, Winston, a Black emeritus history professor, Winston reveals a long-kept secret: it's not Jasper Jenry should be searching for, but Jasper's sister, Juliet, his mom's former girlfriend with whom Marisa had the baby. Learning about his "other mother," as Winston calls Juliet, shatters Jenry's relationship with Marisa. Meanwhile, Winston has been harboring secrets that threaten to undo his relationship with Juliet. Harper skillfully layers the narrative with accounts from the various characters' points of view, capturing palpable emotions and the fissures running through their fraught relations, all the while handling themes of motherhood, race, and sexuality with aplomb. This adds up to a heartrending story. Agent: Anjali Singh, Ayesha Pande Literary. (May)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In this latest from the author of the Ernest J. Gaines short-listed This Side of Providence, musical prodigy Jenry Castillo is on scholarship at Brown University, where he searches for information about his long-dead ballet dancer father. Then Jenry learns from his grandfather, famed Black history professor Winston Patterson, that Jenry's mother and Winston's daughter, Juliet, were lovers. Now Jenry is searching for his "other mother" as well.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A sprawling, multigenerational portrait of a mixed-race family that begins with a man's quest to uncover the truth of his origins. Jenry Castillo, a talented pianist raised by Marisa, a single mother from a family of Cuban immigrants, sets off from Miami to begin his first semester at Brown University. He's desperate to find out more about his biological father, Jasper Patterson, a famous Black ballet dancer his mother met when she studied there and who died young in a tragic accident. Soon after arriving in Providence, he meets Jasper's relatives--his own biological grandfather, Winston, and aunt, Juliet--and the real story of his heritage proves to be more complicated than he'd imagined. With a dizzying narrative that zips from character to character and weaves between present and past, from Providence to Miami to New York to Cuba, Harper has created a novel about longing, loss, kinship, talent, queerness, and what makes a family. At its heart is the story of two young women, Marisa and Juliet, who love each other and decide to have a baby together--and all the lies and secrets and betrayals that unfurl from that choice. Juliet, the "other mother," is a complicated, fully imagined character whose warmth and charm make you root for her even as her darker angels--addiction, selfishness, a desperate need for artistic success--threaten the new life she's built since losing contact with Jenry. The descriptive language is sharpest in these sections: Juliet, once a talented jazz pianist, describes the way windshield wipers give her a feeling of comfort, "like the metronome always used to, marking the top of her piano like an emblem marks the hood of a car." The raw intensity of Juliet's feelings for Jenry, the fear and desire his arrival brings into her life, and her desperation not to make the same mistakes again offer real stakes and drive the narrative forward pleasurably. Some of the sections feel less necessary. The story of Jasper is lovely but ultimately distracting from the main arc. Even Jenry's section, the theoretical raison d'être of the novel, is sluggish and overdetermined. Twists and turns introduced in the historical sections complicate the facts of Jenry's birth and move the plot forward without illuminating the deeper, more interesting conflicts between characters in the present--or creating space for unexpected revelations in the future. A novel about the families we inherit and the ones we make for ourselves. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
