The Celestial Jukebox: A Novel

by Cynthia Shearer

Set in the invented Mississippi Delta town of Madagascar, Cynthia Shearer's The Celestial Jukebox depicts a rural South dependent on agribusiness and the fruits of some less attractive forms of capitalism―gambling and other vices. Into this world comes Boubacar, a fifteen-year-old African boy joining friends from Mauritania already living in the area. They are new African blacks not especially noteworthy in a town filled with Chinese emigrants, African Americans within memory of slavery, and straggling members of the original white families of the area. Presiding over Madagascar is Angus, the second-generation Delta Chinese proprietor of the Celestial Grocery, and his vintage jukebox with its treasure of Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, and Wanda Jackson songs.

The ties that bind the lives in this community together are American roots music and the desire to make a home in the rural South. The purity and beauty of Cynthia Shearer's writing―like the purity of music that exists within this story, an imagined soundtrack of more than thirty songs―marks The Celestial Jukebox as that most rare book, a novel as historically expansive as it is intimate, filled with music, wisdom, and spontaneous joy.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Southern

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot take 10 minutes after finishing: it is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I could not be happier with the time I put into this book. The way the characters move through space, the way the music moves from Howlin’ to Robert Randolph, the way we move through religions and time. I’m happy.

[Candice Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing is what it seems in Cynthia Shearer’s 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙅𝙪𝙠𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙭. Set in a 21st century fictional town of Madagascar, Mississippi, Shearer repaints a new southern landscape where immigrant voices, often ignored in southern literature, share a communal space with native voices. Through the sheer genius of her lyrical prose and the memory of music and song, Shearer intertwines a multifaceted and multicultural saga of the old and new South. While many of the characters attempt to negotiate their immigrant spaces in the comforts of a new South, there are outsiders of Madagascar like Raine Semmes who can hardly navigate white middle-class suburbia in Memphis. Even when presented amongst others like Angus Chien, Boubacar, Dean Fondren, Aubrey Ellerbee, and Peregrine Smith-Jones in this collective masterpiece, Raine Semmes’s story just seems misplaced and unimportant. Functioning in a different space than the other characters, Raine’s story, however, is one that must be told and not ignored here. While other characters function to exist in immigrant spaces in 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙅𝙪𝙠𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙭, Raine functions to exist in a different space of invisibility. Shearer challenges Raine (and her other characters) to subvert these restrictive spaces so they cannot only live but survive.

If you enjoy Southern literature and the immigrant experience mixed with a bit of blues music/rock and roll, then I highly recommend this. There is some heavy trauma, but Shearer creates strong yet vulnerable characters to confront it as well.

[Sammy Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something that really struck me in this novel is its focus on the small act of kindness and the power it brings with it. The line, "just when it seems there's nothing to drink but the same old gasoline, someone will offer water," (365) encompasses that notion well. These moments of grace, of hospitality, of generosity are a kind of power in and of themselves. Angus and his father receive kindness through the sign that Marie paints for them when they are given a sign that traps them more than frees them--the Coke sign not only forces them to sell the brand to pay for it, it looks like a symbol of the world they had just escaped. By painting them a new sign, Marie gives them an opportunity to create their own space of freedom. Angus works in several ways to give back to the people around him, like making the space for the migrant workers to live, and by creating a space of community gathering and care. Raine receives a moment of kindness when the Jukebox Man gives her the mix CD to help her drive over bridges (the first time he sees her struggling with this is also a moment, but the CD is what changes the way she talks to and about herself). Boubacar receives kindness through people teaching him how to play his instrument and giving him the outlet of being able to play the music that means so much to him. This theme through the book definitely speaks to the power of mutual aid networks and community care within a system that is corrupt and exploitive.

[Em Gates · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredible! It's a masterful weaving together of characters and an exploration of both the old South and the new threats facing it, such as casinos, building enterprises, and the suburbs. Each character is richly constructed, and the repetition of certain motifs is excellent and adds to the richness of the text and the celestial nature of some of the events that intertwine. I highly recommend this!

[Emmy Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautifully developed with great attention to history, alluding to the intense research Shearer did to write this novel. It truly does pull heart strings and bring up major problems in the historic South: racism, capitalism, slavery, stubbornness and pride, all juxtaposed against the american dream. But honestly, the book was incredibly hard for me to get through and therefore, not enjoyable. I would recommend it I suppose, but will not be reading again.

[Sam Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling portrait of an interwoven cast of characters making their separate but connected ways in the American South directly prior to and post-9/11. Everyone has a different connection to the land, the music, the art, the stories, but connected they all are. A beautiful read. Somehow dreamy and deeply honest at the same time.

[Yasmeen Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that will keep you on your toes

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second time reading this-- it is just as gorgeous as I remember. The seedy and the celestial expertly juxtaposed. It exactly captures the modern condition in the USA.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Warning: this is going to be a really weird review.] For me, Celestial Jukebox was a strangely silent narrative. Despite the presence of dialogue and the prevalence of music in the novel, the text never made noise in my mind. To put it another way: because dialogue, explicit thoughts, and song lyrics were all printed the same way—with italics, a style usually reserved just for thoughts—nothing, to me, ever made sound. As a result, in my imagined conception of the novel, Chance’s music, “music that always sounded to Raine like a closet full of angry coat hangers, or car crashes in slow motion,” registers the same as Dean thinking, “Mennonites in a casino. . . This is the end” (77, 183). This lack of sound for me has three effects. First, reading Celestial Jukebox has made me aware of how reliant I am on quotation marks to be a signal of sound (and, therefore, activity). Second, despite being one of the more diverse Southern Lit novels I've read , Celestial Jukebox left me with an overwhelming sense of sameness. Since, there’s no change in ‘volume,’ so to speak, there’s no sense of variety. Finally, because thought and dialogue, etc. are announced with the same grammatical signal, I am made more aware that the text exists in someone else’s mental space (perhaps the author’s or omniscient narrator’s?). Overall, I suppose I’m trying to explain why such varied and complex novel came across as completely flat to me.

[Emily]

Amy Harwell says: Set in the invented Mississippi Delta town of Madagascar, Cynthia Shearer's The Celestial Jukebox depicts a rural South dependent on agribusiness and the fruits of some less attractive forms of capitalism--gambling and other vices. Into this world comes Boubacar, a fifteen-year-old African boy joining friends from Mauritania already living in the area. They are new African blacks not especially noteworthy in a town filled with Chinese emigrants, African Americans within memory of slavery, and straggling members of the original white families of the area. Presiding over Madagascar is Angus, the second-generation Delta Chinese proprietor of the Celestial Grocery, and his vintage jukebox with its treasure of Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, and Wanda Jackson songs. The ties that bind the lives in this community together are American roots music and the desire to make a home in the rural South. The purity and beauty of Cynthia Shearer's writing--like the purity of music that exists within this story, an imagined soundtrack of more than thirty songs--marks The Celestial Jukebox as that most rare book, a novel as historically expansive as it is intimate, filled with music, wisdom, and spontaneous joy.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shearer captures the rhythm and cadence of the music that drives her story. She brings together, in the American deep south, the sounds of the Delta Blues, Rock 'n' Roll, Gospel, folk and the African beats of the fictional town of Madagascar, Mississippi's newest immmigrants. Shearer weaves these and other American heritages throughout the stories of several protagonists. Her grasp of lyrical expression can be heard loud and clear in passages such as this one, the call-and-response of a black preacher:

-I don't KNOW about YOU
But I THINK about Jesus
and my HEART is FULL of happiness.
I don't KNOW about YOU
But I THINK about his love
And my HEART is full of what it NEED.
Can I get a WITNESS?
-Amen.
-Can I get a WITNESS?
-AMEN.

Reading this book got me itching to plan a trip to Clarksdale, the veritable birthplace of the blues and home of the Delta Blues Museum.

[Tom Hooker · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Celestial Jukebox depicts a rural South dependent on agribusiness and the fruits of some less attractive forms of capitalism--gambling and other vices. Into this world comes Boubacar, a fifteen-year-old African boy joining friends from Mauritania already living in the area. They are new African blacks not especially noteworthy in a town filled with Chinese emigrants, African Americans within memory of slavery, and straggling members of the original white families of the area. Presiding over Madagascar is Angus, the second-generation Delta Chinese proprietor of the Celestial Grocery, and his vintage jukebox with its treasure.

[Mscout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in rural Mississippi on the verge of 9/11, Shearer brings together seemingly disparate elements to form a rich tapestry. Major themes, including race, religion and immigration, play an important role throughout. Though most of the narrative takes place over a few weeks in the summer and fall of 2001, there is a good deal from the past that shows up to weigh heavily on the present. Like the best writers, Shearer leaves you wondering what happens to the folks who live in her novel after the book is closed.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's an overlooked gem. Gentle, slow-paced prose takes you to the small town of Madagascar, Mississippi, and into the intertwining lives of a diverse cast of characters. This is not a good book to pick and and put down in short bursts; it is a lovingly constructed portrait of people from different walks of life, and the social forces that pull them along in its wake. Two years after reading this book, the characters remain vivid in my mind; Cynthia Shearer truly brings them to life.

[Peter Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

First-rate work; should be much better known. Esp good on southern music as American music whose roots, when you know the South, are profoundly African. Great perspectives on the new multiracial South (it's not black/white and never was). And it's refreshing to read an author who loves her characters in all their differences and their confusion, and to see her avoiding the usual Gothic South cliches.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved the beautiful storytelling and vivid imagery in this book. I grew up in the South so many of the references felt familiar. Some authors do a great job of weaving together interconnected stories and characters, others fall flat. Luckily, Cynthia Shearer falls in the former category with this novel. i would love to read more of her work.

[Agathafrye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous language, wonderful rich characters. Yes, yes, yes.

[Deede · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book set in Memphis and North Mississippi. A variety of folks from a lot of different cultures all intersecting in some way.

[George]

A great read with fully developed characters.