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Powell's Staff: New Literature in Translation: December 2022 and January 2023 (0 comment)
It may be a new year, this may be a list of new books, but our love for literature in translation hasn’t changed at all, and we are so pleased to be enthusiastically recommending these recent releases. On this list, you’ll find a Spanish novel where controversy swirls around a Coca-Cola billboard...
Read More»
  • Kelsey Ford: From the Stacks: J. M. Ledgard's Submergence (0 comment)
  • Kelsey Ford: Five Book Friday: Year of the Rabbit (1 comment)

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Silver Sparrow

by Tayari Jones
Silver Sparrow

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9781565129900
ISBN10: 1565129903
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A powerful, timely debut, The Turner House marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family.

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and shapes—their family’s future.

Already praised by Ayana Mathis as “utterly moving” and “un-putdownable,” The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It’s a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home.

Review

“Silver Sparrow brings to mind John Irving in the ways it makes an epic story out of ordinary lives. The good, the bad, and the ugly all happen in this marvelously moving tale. Read this book! I can’t say it any more plainly than that.” Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine

Review

"Jones is a master, and Silver Girl is a revelation, alive with meaning, heartbreak, and hope." -- Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Lark and Termite

Review

"[An] expansive third novel...Jones effectively blends the sisters' varied, flawed perspectives as the characters struggle with presumptions of family and the unwieldy binds of love and identity."--Booklist

Essence

Review

“A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Joness skill for wry understatement never wavers.” —O: The Oprah Magazine


Review

"If your mom is a fan of emotionally charged morality tales (and whose mom isn't?), she's going to devour Tayari Jones's third novel, Silver Sparrow, in a single sitting. Jones, a native Atlantan, once again mines her town for material and strikes serious pay dirt. Sparrow introduces us to sisters Dana Lynn Yarboro and Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon, who were born four months apart from different mothers and have never met. One reason? Their father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist who has gone to great pains to ensure they remain in the dark about each other. And when they do meet, that's when Sparrow gets really good."--Essence

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Review

"A graceful and shining work about finding the truth." - Library Journal, starred review

Los Angeles Times

Review

“A tense, layered and evocative tale...Jones explores the rivalry and connection of siblings, the meaning of beauty, the perils of young womanhood, the complexities of romantic relationships and the contemporary African-American experience.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune The Today Show

Review

“Impossible to put down until you find out how these sisters will discover their own versions of family.”—Los Angeles Times The Root

Review

“An amazing, amazing read.”
—Jennifer Weiner on NBCs Today show

Review

“Silver Sparrow is rich, substantive, meaningful. It is also, at turns, funny and sharp, haunting and heartbreaking.”—The Root More

Review

“Absorbing . . . Jones writes dialogue that is realistic and sparkling, with an intuitive sense of how much to reveal and when.”--Washington Post Vogue

Review

“Tayari Joness immensely pleasurable new novel pulls off a minor miracle . . . Jones crafts an affecting tale about things, big and small, we forfeit to forge a family . . . There are no winners in this empathetic and provocative story, just survivors.” —More


Review

“Charting a vast emotional unknown is Tayari Jones's compelling third novel, Silver Sparrow, in which a teenage girl's coming of age in 1990s Atlanta is shadowed by her dawning understanding of a corrosive secret - her father's second family.” - Vogue The Oklanhoman

Review

“Nakedly honest...dazzlingly charged” —Atlanta Journal Constitution Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Review

“This is a heartbreaking story of two sisters, unknown to each other at first, who find and love each other for a short time in their lives.” - The Oklahoman Brooklyn Rail

Review

“This is a precisely written, meticulously controlled work. Its also one that leaves room for the messiness of fragmented lives — an impressive command of the craft at hand, and its paradoxes.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn Village Voice

Review

“Beautifully written, Silver Sparrow will break your heart.”—Brooklyn Rail

Review

“[Jones] is fast defining middle-class black Atlanta the way Cheever did Westchester” - Village Voice

Review

“Tayari Jones has taken Atlanta for her literary terroir, and like many of our finest novelists, she gives readers a sense of place in a deeply observed way. But more than that, Jones has created in her main characters tour guides of that region: honest, hurt, observant and compelling young women whose voices cannot be ignored . . . Impossible to put down until you find out how these sisters will discover their own versions of family.”
—Los Angeles Times

Review

“That Jones offers no pat answers is the secret sauce spicing Silver Sparrow. The prose goes down so compulsively that it might be easy to miss the heart of the story. She shines a light on a particular disenfranchised group, the children who grow up in second families.” —The Denver Post

Review

“Populating this absorbing novel is a vivid cast of characters . . . Jones writes dialogue that is realistic and sparkling, with an intuitive sense of how much to reveal and when . . . One of literatures most intriguing extended families.” —The Washington Post


Review

“Jones gives us permission to love all of the novels women, though they are flawed and often refuse to love each other. Thats a recipe for great book club discussions.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Review

"Utterly moving and tough as nails, The Turner House is a love story as immense as the family it describes, and as complicated as the city that made them. A clear-sighted ode to the bonds that make and break us, to resilience across generations, to shared joys and solitary struggles, Flournoy's debut is as fresh and bold as they come.  Commanding and un-putdownable!"—Ayana Mathis, bestselling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

“The Turner House is a marvelous novel introducing a family of irresistible characters.  Angela Flournoy is a magician--here is a story that is charming and funny while being whip-smart and profound. Laced through are the hard facts of history and the mysterious workings of the human heart. The magic begins with the extraordinary first chapter and lasts to the very last page. This is a thrilling debut from a writer to watch.”—Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow and others

“Angela Flournoy’s extraordinary debut novel, The Turner House, is as compelling, unforgettable, and beautifully told a story as I’ve read in ages. The real and the supernatural, the hardships and hard won triumphs of the tightly knit, at times warring Turner clan will pull you close to this family’s generous, dignified heart. While each of the thirteen siblings (and their parents) could carry a book on his or her own, here they remain indelibly linked by the complicated bonds of history and belonging—and by the promises of their heartbreak city, Detroit."—Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban, King of Cuba, and others

“Angela Flournoy’s brilliant The Turner House is about no less than the joy and aggravation of being a human being in a large family, in a house, in a city, on this earth.  This book is so beautifully written, so perfectly observed and heard—it’s about aging and parenthood and above all that misunderstood lifelong union, siblinghood—but it’s also pure pleasure to read: funny, heartbreaking, with the sort of characters you’ll miss like family when you finish. The Turner House is an absolutely wonderful novel.”—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Giant’s House, Thunderstruck, and others

Synopsis

With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle.

Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s two families — the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters — the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle — she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another’s lives.

At the heart of it all are the two lives at stake, and like the best writers — think Toni Morrison with The Bluest Eye — Jones portrays the fragility of these young girls with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand attention, and try to imagine themselves as women, just not as their mothers.

Synopsis

From the New York Times Bestselling Author of An American Marriage

"A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones's skill for wry understatement never wavers."
--O: The Oprah Magazine

"Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I'll never forget. This is a book I'll read more than once."
--Judy Blume

With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.

Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed "one of the most important writers of her generation" (the Atlanta Journal Constitution).

Synopsis

With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a mans deception, a familys complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.

Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoons two families—the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed “one of the most important writers of her generation” (the Atlanta Journal Constitution).

Synopsis

A novel centered on the journey of the Turner family and its thirteen siblings, particularly the eldest and youngest, as they face the ghosts of their pasts—both an actual haint and the specter of addiction—the imminent loss of their mother, and the necessary abandonment of their family home in struggling Detroit.

About the Author

Tayari Jones is the author of two previous novels. Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. She serves on the MFA faculty at Rutgers and blogs on writing at www.tayari jones.com/blog.

4.7 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.7 (3 comments)

`
Jeffrey Ricker , January 19, 2012 (view all comments by Jeffrey Ricker)
Stunning and beautiful, Silver Sparrow draws you in quietly at the beginning and keeps pulling you along breathlessly. Even when you know it will not end well, you can't resist. I wish every book I read could be this good.

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Forgets , January 02, 2012
This book opens with what seems like a spoiler, and explains itself away throughout the rest of the 350-something pages. “My father is a bigamist,” a girl tells us. And at first sight, that sentence told me what I needed to know about men in this book, and about the women "sisters and wives" who were being kept secret in each her own way. The story is divided in half, just like everything and everyone else in the book. Each half is narrated by one of the father’s two daughters, first Dana, then Chaurisse. Every single character here is torn, and yet there’s nothing similar or predictable about the voices we get to hear from. And what’s even better, the sisters and all the women in this book, even though they are set up to be rivals, really stick together. I was worried, when I saw that first line, about the stereotypes I expected to come, of fighting catty women and the pain of sharing a man of any kind, father or husband. No, although these women are in a mixed state of either knowing-but-not-caring, or knowing-and-in-pain, the main characters do reach out and take care of each other. And even worse, you manage to feel sorry for the bigamist, the daddy. James is a sad and ultimately pathetic man, who keeps one family in secret (a family who knows everything about him), and another family in public (a family that is missing a few crucial facts about their father). The idea of knowledge as privilege and simultaneous disadvantage plagues both halves of the novel. At first one might expect Chaurisse, the legitimate daughter, to benefit the most from having a known-father she lives with, but there is a sadness entering her half of the novel knowing something she doesn’t. How can she love a daddy she doesn’t really know? And Dana’s story, more frustrating in its nature, is having a father who is ashamed of her and will pay a high price to keep her and his mistress quiet. Like most of Jones’s work, this book is set in Atlanta, Georgia, and it follows the lives of black young women in the 70s and 80s. I am not tired and will never tire of Jones’s characters struggling in a way that hits so close to home. Silver Sparrow ties in the weight of the civil rights movement still controversial in the south, and sheds light on yet another dark spot of American history, illegitimate and alternative families, and the women affected by them. It is also a story about women of colour in which the characters have promising futures, and it touched me to see that although the sisters finally meet and the secret is found out, they have not lost hope even when few if any of their problems are resolved.

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columbo0808 , January 01, 2012
A wonderful novel from Tayari Jones that stay's with you long after the last page has been read. What an incredible talent!

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781565129900
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
05/01/2011
Publisher:
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Pages:
352
Height:
8.25 in.
Width:
5.5 in.
Author:
Tayari Jones
Author:
Angela Flournoy
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
General Fiction

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