Welcome to the Book Review Book Club! Every month, we select a book to discuss with our readers. Last month, we read “Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë. (You can also go back and listen to our episodes on “The Hounding,” “What We Can Know” and “Hamnet.”)
“My first word was ‘mother,’ spoken out loud and with texture.”
So begins Tayari Jones’s new novel, “Kin.” It’s an ironic but apt opening because throughout the book mothers are the very figures who remain persistently out of reach.
The story follows two orphaned girls, Annie and Niecy, who grow up together in Louisiana in the 1950s. When she was a baby, Annie was abandoned by her mother, who, not wanting to be a parent, ran away to Memphis. Meanwhile, when Niecy was a baby, her father murdered her mother. Growing up, the girls live under the shadow of loss, but at the very least they have each other, two “cradle friends” so close they’re practically sisters.
Then Niecy and Annie finish high school. Niecy sets out for Spelman College to try to make a name for herself, while Annie flees to Memphis to seek the mother she never knew. Along the way, each must confront — and determine what they are willing to sacrifice to achieve — love and family.
In March, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “Kin,” by Tayari Jones. We’ll be chatting about it on the Book Review podcast that airs on March 27, and we’d love for you to join the conversation. Share your thoughts about the novel in the comments section of this article by March 19, and we may mention your observations in the episode.
Here’s some related reading to get you started.
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Our review of “Kin”: “Men have their place in “Kin,” but women set the tone: colorful, pragmatic and above all honest. … As narrators, Niecy and Annie channel this convivial clarity, immediately drawing the reader in. And despite some heartbreaking material — the motherlessness is just the beginning — Jones maintains a light touch and a gift for effortless portraiture.” Read the full review here.
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Our recent profile of Tayari Jones, which explores her career, her approach to writing and the slow burn of creating “Kin”: “I’ve always been a limber type of writer, but this is the first time when I’m writing a book that I didn’t plan to write,” Jones said. “I had to just surrender to it.” Read our full profile of Tayari Jones here.
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Our 2018 podcast interview with Tayari Jones about “An American Marriage”: “I do think that part of Black middle-class culture is the feeling that it could all be taken away from you in an instant. That something will happen and the only relevant detail will be your race, and your education won’t matter, your job won’t matter, nothing matters. And so that fear, I have always known that fear as an undercurrent all my life. And so in this novel, I just stared it in the face and asked: ‘What if it really happened? Then what?’” Listen to the full interview here.
We can’t wait to discuss this novel with you. In the meantime, happy reading!
The post Book Club: Read ‘Kin,’ by Tayari Jones, With the Book Review appeared first on New York Times.
