** spoiler alert ** This book falls somewhere between like and love for me. I love Alice Walker, or at least what I can know of her from this incredible collection of fables, myths, hitherto unknown (to me) history, and individual's stories dredged from letters, tapes, paintings, memories, and psyches. What a mind she has! Masha'ALLAH!
The characters seem archetypal, rather than real people. Most of them I didn't like, except Mr Hal (who possibly would not like me). Everyone is consciously working on knowing themselves and realizing their purpose in life, which is commendable in real life. But most of Walker's characters exhibit a degree of selfishness that I find too pointed. Is this required to drive toward ultimate self-realization, especially when your loved ones are not at your level of consciousness. People dropped each other a lot in this book. Of course, to continue the narrative, they came back together. The emphasis on traits that move the story along may be what I am reacting toward; thus my feeling that the characters are archetypes and not real.
Is there a follow-on to this book that picks up on the characters who may be in for a major adjustment in their lives when the book ends? Fanny and Arveyda seem to have resolved themselves. What about Carlotta and Sowelo? The emotional dynamics shift dramatically in the two coupled foursome. Some make it to the finish line and some don't? Archetype or real, the unbalance bothers me.
I'd also like to know more about Lissie's 'experience' of life when men lived separate from women. What's the root of that idea?