The Washington Post

staff

Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow book review - The Washington Post

Mixed review of 'Memphis,' a novel by Tara M. Stringfellow, recently chosen by Jenna Bush Hager for the Today Show book club

Memphis has played a complicated role in America’s racial history. In the mid-19th century, thousands of enslaved Black people were bought and sold at the market owned by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/12/07/nashville-forrest-confederate-statue-removed/">Nathan Bedford Forrest</a>, who later became a Confederate general and then the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. In the mid-20th century, Memphis was so central to the fight for civil rights that Martin Luther King Jr. went there during the ​​sanitation workers’ strike to preach “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” The next day, he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel.

other

Tara M. Stringfellow draws on this tragic past and the experiences of her own family to construct the sweeping plot of <a href="https://amzn.to/38TtJrr" target=_blank>her debut novel, “Memphis.”</a> It’s a story that moves back and forth across the decades from World War II to the war in Afghanistan following the struggles of three generations of resilient Black women.

Jenna Bush Hager recently chose “Memphis” for her “Today” show book club, claiming “it will fill you with joy and hope.” But the path to that joy leads through decades of trauma, and during much of that time, hope is all these characters possess. Indeed, Stringfellow has a lush, romantic style that’s often the only counterweight to the grim details of her story.

The novel’s scrambled chronology initially feels like a challenge, but the chapters are clearly dated and named as they move to focus on a grandmother, her daughters and her grandchildren. Readers will come to see that Stringfellow is demonstrating the erratic movements of history, the false starts and reversals and, yes, the moments of progress that are reflected in our haphazard march toward realizing King’s vision for America.

At the center of the story is a house “that spanned out in all directions in a wild, Southern maze” — like this novel. The first time we see it, Stringfellow turns up the dial on her poetic language: “The honeysuckle drew hummingbirds the size of baseballs,” she writes. “Bees as big as hands buzzed about, pollinating the morning glories, giving the yard a feeling that the green expanse itself was alive and humming and moving.”

This is a house built by hand by the family’s legendary patriarch, Myron North. Born in the 1920s, Myron served in World War II and then returned to Memphis to become the city’s first Black homicide detective — only to be cut down in the way of so many victims of Southern racism. But the house he constructed remains, a sustaining monument to his love and labor, an anchor and a fortress in a city making its tumultuous way through decades of racial strife.

The novel opens in 1995. Myron’s daughter Miriam is coming back home to live with her younger sister, a woman who never left Memphis or pursued her dreams but bears no apparent resentment toward her prodigal sibling. Fleeing an abusive husband, Miriam has two young daughters in tow and knows how lucky they are to have access to this old family house where they can start again.

There is, however, one irreducible problem with Miriam’s plan and, I think, with Stringfellow’s novel.

In the first chapter, we learn that the last time Miriam visited, her then-3-year-old daughter, Joan, was raped by her sister’s 8-year-old son. Now that boy is a teenager, and Joan is so terrified to see him that she immediately wets herself. She will spend the next few years living with him, sharing the same bathroom, trying to avoid looking at him, struggling to protect her little sister from the horror she endured.

Try as I might, I could never get beyond the shocking implausibility of this move. It’s not as though Joan’s sexual abuse were her own horrible secret. The family knows about Joan’s rape. Stringfellow says that Miriam always feared her nephew and “did not want him anywhere near her daughters,” which makes moving in with him seem particularly reckless.

I don’t mean to criticize the plot, per se; fiction should be free to reach for the infinitely bizarre events of real life. The issue, really, is that “Memphis” never commits itself to the considerable work of making this ghastly event psychologically persuasive. In every other way, Miriam is a concerned, attentive mother, but she spends more time explaining why she left her violent husband than justifying why she moved in with her disturbed nephew, who continues to grow more brutal. And young Joan’s residual anger toward her cousin feels uncomplicated and too fully self-conscious.

It’s eventually clear that these things must come to pass so that Stringfellow can engineer a redemptive story of forgiveness. But along the way, she fails to contend sufficiently with the lasting damage and complications of incest and sexual abuse.

Fortunately, other parts of “Memphis” are more convincing and subtle. With her richly impressionistic style, Stringfellow captures the changes transforming Memphis in the latter half of the 20th century. She conveys the infuriating, sometimes deadly humiliations that Black veterans endured after serving their country abroad. And she has a particularly good ear for the conversations among friends who hold this community together. She understands the civic function played by retail stores, hairdressers and churches, all the little organizations that tie families into larger groups, bulwarks against a rising tide of gang violence and gun deaths.

The most lovely, even inspiring element of “Memphis” is the story of Joan’s artistic ambitions. Although the young woman has talent and the benefit of devoted teachers, she lacks what every young creator needs: a sense that someone like her could, in fact, succeed. Miriam believes Joan should become a doctor so that she need never depend on a man. During one of their many arguments about this, Miriam’s exasperation boils over into taunting: “Name me one successful artist with a dark face. With breasts. Name one Black woman famous artist. Go on. I’ll wait.”

Joan can’t think of a single name. But amid all its other storylines, this is the tale of a young woman realizing that someday that name may be her own.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post. Before moving to Washington, he edited the books section of the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. 

Ron Charles

Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow book review

the-washington-post

washpost

iptc-media/society/values

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment/literature/fiction

iptc-media/society/family

iptc-media/politics

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment/literature

iptc-media/arts_culture_entertainment_and_media/arts_and_entertainment

iptc-media/society

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Johnson & Johnson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Bed Bath & Beyond KWs - INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: USAA KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Discover Card KWs – EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ The Offer KW List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Arts & Entertainment_legacyaux_btb

advertising/B2_Asian Lifestyle Content_legacyaux_im0

advertising/B2_Books, Comics and other Literature_legacyaux_p1a

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Capital One (One Tech) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Louis Vuitton KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 12.23.20

client-blocklists/Client List: Diageo - Johnnie Walker KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ Client List: Mercedes EQS KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FlexForm KW List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Horror and Thriller Entertainment

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/1st: Keywords+IPTC: Arts/Entertainment/Documentaries

client-blocklists/Client List: Organon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Verizon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ Halo KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Synchrony Financial KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Ukraine-Russia (Apple News) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Showtime KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple TV+ KW – INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Ronald McDonald House KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client Neg KW List: Omega KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ Halo KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/PMI KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Marcus Goldman Sachs Neg KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Corporate Responsibility_legacyaux_FTM

advertising/B2_Design Engineering_legacyaux_i6w

advertising/B2_Disaster, Accident and Tragedy_legacyaux_758

client-blocklists/Client List: Citibank KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Citibank KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/SAP KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Fidelity Investments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Turbo Tax KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/CME KW List 2022 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/National Instruments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Intel KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Lifestyle_legacyaux_ipv

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T Digital Divide  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Samsung 2021 KWs - INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Google PG Competitor KWs - EXCLUDES ALL 

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Shopping_legacyaux_sa6

advertising/B2_Society_legacyaux_0cz

advertising/B2_Transportation, Logistics, and Industry_legacyaux_kre

advertising/B2_Women's Beauty_legacyaux_9jv

advertising/B2_Men's Grooming_legacyaux_1ve

client-blocklists/Client List: GEICO KWs

client-blocklists/Client List: KPMG KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Siemens KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Cisco KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T ALT KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Mercedes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FX Excludes All Disney

client-blocklists/Client List: Northrop Grumman KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Inpixon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Boeing KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Google KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Philip Morris KWs - INCLUDES ANY 

client-blocklists/Capital One KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 1.4.21

client-blocklists/Bank of America Merrill Lynch KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Office Depot KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: ETrade KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

Books

Book reviews and news about new books, best sellers, authors, literature, biographies, memoirs, children's books, fiction, non-fiction and more. Search Washington, DC area books events, reviews and bookstores from the Washington Post.

Arts & Entertainment

‘Memphis’ traces decades of Black Americans’ trauma and triumph

Emily St. John Mandel called "Sea of Tranquility."

Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility book review - The Washington Post

Emily St. John Mandel's "Sea of Tranquility" ("Station Eleven," etc.) is a time-traveling exploration of the nature of reality. 

Even before there was late-night pizza delivery, people sat around debating the ultimate nature of reality.

More than 2,000 years ago, Master Zhuang dreamed he was a butterfly, and Plato imagined shadows dancing on a cave wall. While the Puritans were building their City on a Hill, Descartes worried that some evil demon was creating the complicated illusion we mistake for the physical world.

Electrified by semiconductors, modern philosophers hypothesized that our lives could be elaborate computer simulations — a woo-woo thesis that gave rise, on this plane of existence, to a long shelf of science fiction novels.

As Y2K threatened to destroy modern civilization, millions of people swarmed to “The Matrix” and wondered whether they should choose the red pill or wear a long leather jacket.

Slippery speculations about reality remain everything everywhere all at once. Perhaps two years of Zoom meetings and virtual work have made us particularly susceptible to the far-out hypotheses of epistemology. What else could explain our obsession with literary novels that pick at loose threads in the fabric of time and space? Coincidence? Or is the evil demon finally showing his hand?

In just the last few months, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/anomaly-herve-le-tellier-book-review/2021/11/30/44f5f234-517d-11ec-9267-17ae3bde2f26_story.html" target=_blank>Hervé Le Tellier’s</a> “The Anomaly” — a cheeky bestseller from France — has fascinated readers with its story of a Boeing 787 that is instantly replicated, much to the chagrin of the passengers and their doppelgangers.

Hanya Yanagihara’s new epic, “To Paradise,” traces inexplicable parallels and recurring names passing through a New York mansion for 200 years.

The remarkable worlds of Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘To Paradise’

And now we have arrived — or seem to have arrived — at Emily St. John Mandel’s wildly anticipated novel, “Sea of Tranquility.” It’s a curious thought experiment that borrows from the plague terror she spun in “Station Eleven” and the perception-bending tricks she played in “The Glass Hotel.” (Fans will even catch some characters from that previous novel flickering through this new one.)

“Sea of Tranquility” is an elegant demonstration of Mandel’s facility with a range of tones and historical periods. The novel opens in 1912 when Edwin, a young Englishman who offended his wealthy father, finds himself exiled to the wilds of Western Canada. He has some vague notion that he’ll take up farming, whatever that might entail. In the meantime, he pouts and drifts. “The trouble with Victoria,” he thinks, “is that it’s too much like England without actually being England. It’s a far-distant simulation of England, a watercolor superimposed unconvincingly on the landscape.”

In ‘Station Eleven,’ a pandemic is both the end and beginning of the world

That line is the tripwire that triggers this novel’s curious philosophical considerations. A few pages later, our hapless hero is walking in the forest where he spots a maple tree in a clearing. “He steps forward,” Mandel writes, “into a flash of darkness, like sudden blindness or an eclipse. He has an impression of being in some vast interior, something like a train station or a cathedral, and there are notes of violin music, there are other people around him, and then an incomprehensible sound—.”

Edwin finds this surreal experience upsetting but only for what it suggests about his mental health. Regardless, he’s quickly abandoned as the novel jumps ahead a century to characters we last saw in “The Glass Hotel” and then a century beyond that to the year 2203. A best-selling novelist named Olive, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Emily St. John Mandel, is on a book tour around planet Earth.

Emily St. John Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’ was a huge hit. Now she’s back with a different apocalypse.

Mandel delivers this futuristic section with an impish blend of wit and dread. Olive misses her husband and daughter back on the moon as her publisher spirits her to public readings, panel discussions and inane interviews with poorly prepared journalists. (In one of several delightfully meta moments, Olive asks her audience why there’s been such strong interest lately in post-apocalyptic literature.) It’s thrilling to imagine that we’ll still have novels and even bookstores in the 23rd century; it’s less exciting to learn that we’ll still be sheltering in lockdown and dying of plagues.

All these various stories are finely constructed, but they  gather force only during the novel’s time-traveling second half set in the year 2401. Mandel moves lightly across this distant era. A world utterly transformed is merely implied by allusions to China’s primacy and various independent regions of the United States. Rather than clutter the pages with technological advances and gee-whiz gadgets, “Sea of Tranquility” concentrates on the psychological implications of living in domed colonies on the surface of the moon. This is science fiction that keeps its science largely in abeyance, as dark matter for a story about loneliness, grief and finding purpose.

A man named Gaspery — spotted fleetingly in earlier chapters — now comes into full focus. Still mourning the loss of his mother, Gaspery lives on the moon and works at a “terminally boring” hotel job. He might have stayed there his whole life, if it weren’t for his sister. She specializes in something called “quantum blockchain technology,” the fusion of two things I don’t understand in the present day. Breaking all the security rules, she tells Gaspery that “moments from different centuries are bleeding into one another.” And once bitten by that revelation, Gaspery can’t shake the desire to travel through time and figure out what’s causing the anomaly.

This is heavy, as Marty McFly would say. The paradoxes of Gaspery’s adventure will be familiar to anyone who’s studied Jean Baudrillard or seen “Back to the Future.” But Mandel has the stylistic elegance and emotional sympathy to make this more than merely an undergraduate bull session. Absent your own time portal to the 1990s, it’s a chance to re-experience the thrill of “Sophie’s World,” to wrestle with the mind-blowing possibility that what is may be entirely different from what we see.

As a young Christian Scientist, I spent an inordinate amount of time fussing over the nature of consciousness and the unsubstantiality of matter. A junior epistemologist, I was trafficking in Bishop Berkeley before I could drive. These days, though, I’m a lot more concerned with how we treat each other and how we grieve, subjects that feel close to the heart of Mandel’s novel.

This fall, the philosopher-poet John Koethe will publish a collection called “Beyond Belief.” In one poem, he writes,

Either way, you can’t know whether

It was real or just an exercise in self-delusion, for whichever it might be

The view from where you are remains the same, with nothing to go on

But the trying, and dying for it to happen again and again.

That’s likely to remain true even in the 25th century, even on the moon.

Ron Charles

Washington, D.C.

‘Memphis’ traces decades of Black Americans’ trauma and triumph

Emily St. John Mandel’s ‘Sea of Tranquility’ is a mind-bending novel

‘Young Mungo’ seals it: Douglas Stuart is a genius

In Ukraine, humor has become a weapon of war

Jennifer Egan’s ‘The Candy House’ revisits the goon squad

Ted Cruz gave the nation a lesson on misreading kids books

Anne Tyler’s ‘French Braid’ is entirely familiar, and that’s just perfect

In ‘Mecca,’ Susan Straight unearths the real Southern California

‘How do I get out of a reading slump?’ The Post’s Book critics answered your questions.

In Stewart O’Nan’s ‘Ocean State,’ mean girls turn deadly