Okay, the professional reviews on this one were pretty positive, so I thought I would give it a shot since my spouse thinks I hate Christmas and I thought my reading this in October would impress her since I love Halloween and spooky stuff. It didn’t work, and I wound up wasting time on this serviceable trifle. It had its charming moments, and I’m sure it will make a forgettable enough TV movie one day.
My major beef is the two white authors have set this story in Harlem, which means nothing to the story. They toss off a mention of the Apollo Theater and a tossed-off comment about hipster stores coming and going constantly. I was a little unclear about the race of the central family, but I was troubled by the son Will getting involved in crime to impress his new “friends” who are using him and are definitely coded as Black. They have nicknames that two out-of-touch white guys definitely came up with, and they are introduced as being into “beanie hats and baggy pants,” which is a lazy stereotype at best. This story did not need to be set in Harlem (other than a Deus ex ordinance later) nor involve troubling racial connotations, especially given Patterson’s recent comment and his friendship with Bill Clinton who famously kicked off (or at least exacerbated) Harlem’s gentrification by having offices there. I’m not saying Patterson can’t tell Black stories, but I’m not sure he should. He can mentor, promote, and publish Black authors and their stories all day every day. I’m just not sure he is the correct person to tell these stories, and it seems like he resents BIPOC authors being published more these days.
And if the central family is white, that comes with its own problems because it should mean something that they live in a historically Black part of NYC. How do they fit into the tapestry of this community?
I wouldn’t care about this as much if the story was set just about anywhere else. This story cannot support the weight of being set in Harlem.
Either have something to say about the current state and/or history of a place with as rich and fraught a history as Harlem or don’t set your story there. Will could easily be getting into trouble on his own or getting into non-criminal trouble for his new friends. He doesn’t have to be helping Black kids shoplift and perpetuating the Black criminals in Harlem trope.
Regardless, Chinua Hawk does a fantastic job performing this story, and I can recommend the audiobook highly if you want to give this book a try.