Synopses & Reviews
When Addy Abraham steps out from the airport terminal into the noonday heat of the Caribbean, she enters a world of brilliant color and sound -- nothing like the wintry, gray existence she has left behind in the city. Recovering from a perplexing illness that has left her weak and uneasy, she spontaneously embarks on a journey into the past, a journey that -- strangely enough -- begins on the island of St. Clair, a place she has never seen.
Addy's trip is propelled by memories of the woman who raised her, and of the girl she once was. In the emptiness created by her parents' distant and unhappy marriage, Addy grew up a nearly feral child, untamable and fierce. The arrival of Louise, a new nanny, gave Addy her first feeling that someone understood her and cared for her unconditionally. As Addy grew up, Louise offered a haven, perhaps the only thing that stood between her and her darkest instincts.
Now comes news of Louise's death, startling Addy out of the trance that her daily routine has become. Arriving in St. Clair for the funeral, she is drawn into the turmoil and grief of Louise's close-knit family. But as she meets Louise's children and her lover -- all the people she abandoned to care for a stranger a thousand miles away -- Addy awakens to how little she knew of the most important person in her past. And she is finally forced to confront the myths that helped her survive her childhood -- the same ones that are making her adult life a barren ground.
Alexandra Styron's first novel is a vibrant and uncommonly wise story of a woman at odds with herself, desperately looking for a sense of belonging, and finding it in an unexpected place. It will be admired as much for its unforgettable characters and vivid settings as for its unmistakable literary craft.
Review
When young Adelaide Abraham's parents are fighting, humiliating themselves in front of company or ignoring her, Cat -- Addy's haunting, menacing imaginary companion, a slinking shadow of her anxiety -- appears. Her mother, an actress with a frozen smile, and her father, a Ph.D. and once-revered writer, can't see much past their own egos, and they certainly can't fathom their wild, mangy-haired child. It's not until Louise, a regal black woman from the Caribbean, arrives to keep house for the Abrahams that Addy, relishing some unbridled attention, can chase Cat, and her parents, away.
On the day that Louise arrives, Addy is deliberately cutting herself with a broken glass over the kitchen sink. Louise enters the scene grandly, comforts Addy, then teases her, "What yah doing the dishes for? Dat's not yah job." Louise seems to be the first person who sees Addy clearly. She doesn't treat her like an animal that needs to be tamed.
In All the Finest Girls, Alexandra Styron's first novel, compressed dialogue like this unlocks the characters and keeps the story moving at a graceful yet probing pace. The chapters' settings alternate between the island of St. Clair, where the adult Addy travels to attend Louise's funeral and confront Louise's family, and the Connecticut countryside of Addy's childhood. Styron's characters have the star power of beloved great actors in modern cameo roles -- you find yourself yearning to see them move across the screen one more time. Louise, in particular, glides in and out with an incomparable arsenal of emotion and power.
Styron expertly navigates the mysterious caverns of a distraught child's pain and lets Addy grow up with much of her idiosyncratic aura intact. At 32, Addy is a New York art restorer in search of a fuller understanding of the woman who saved her from her parents' selfishness. In Louise's sons, Derek and Phillip, she believes she sees her real kin. Soon, not surprisingly, she's forced to realize that Louise's life was about much more than raising a crazy little white girl. "Ya tink she woulda wanted yah here?" Derek finally shouts at her. "She wouldna given a shit. Don't yah get it? She was paid for caring for yah!" Yet even that truth is complicated. Addy discovers that when Louise came to starched, foreign Connecticut she left behind a profound anguish of her own. In visiting St. Clair in order to bandage up her own family's wounds, Addy shares more with the older woman than at first it seems.
Styron is straightforward about the shades of white, brown and black that divide her characters, and on this topic she's accomplished something remarkable. Louise's differences -- "no one has skin that is dark like hers, no one has a nose so broad," the child Addy thinks -- don't become a subject of curiosity for Addy until she and Louise visit a church together, and the girl discovers that in a place where everyone is supposedly equal before God, Louise somehow isn't. Addy prides herself on her innate acceptance of Louise, but as her memories come into focus, old transgressions and betrayals come to light.
Despite the weightiness of her themes, Styron's tone is never heavy-handed. She doesn't downplay the tragic enormity of racism's crimes. Color becomes a way into this story of the tentative exchanges shared by people tangled up in worlds they don't fully understand. Suzy Hansen, Salon.com
Review
"In this beautifully controlled first novel, Alexandra Styron re-creates a painful journey through secrets and deceptions of the past to a liberating self-discovery. Her portrait of Louise, the woman who comes from the Caribbean to care for the angry little girl, Addy Abraham, is told with heartbreaking clarity." Maureen Howard, author of Big As Life
Review
"Alexandra Styron's All the Finest Girls is exquisitely written. This novel enters deeply into the mystery of how we invent ourselves, often despite our families. It subtly forces itself through the various codas of privilege and out the other side so that we see the fullness of the young woman without the suffocation of cultural accoutrements. It is at the same time lyrical and harsh, and the heroine becomes someone we really know, like a friend who makes us sleepless with worry." Jim Harrison, author of Dalva and Legends of the Fall
Synopsis
Addy Abraham was practically a feral child, untamable and wild--until a new babysitter gave her a haven from her parents' battles. But when Louise dies, it startles Addy out of the trance that has become her adult life.
Synopsis
Now in paperback, the acclaimed first novel that movingly charts the intersection of two lives and two worlds--the story of a fierce and untamable young girl who must find a sense of belonging in an unexpected place.
About the Author
ALEXANDRA STYRON lives in New York City and Chilmark, Massachusetts. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. This is her first novel.