From Publishers Weekly
Part love story, part fable, part feminist manifesto, part political statement, Walker's novel follows a cast of interrelated characters, most of them black. and each representing a differ ent ethnic strain that contributes to the black experience in America. Marred by didacticism, theorizing and pontificating, "the book never achieves the narrative power of The Color Purple ," noted PW . Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Nothing in Walker's extraordinary new novel is fixed. Time and place range from precolonial Africa to post-slavery North Carolina to modern-day San Francisco; and the characters themselves change and evolve as their stories are told, their myriad histories revealed. Most often present are Miss Lissie, an old woman with a fascinating host of former lives; her companion, the gentle Mr. Hal; Arveyda, a soul-searching musician; his wife Carlotta, who was born in the South American jungle; Fanny, a young woman who has a tendency to fall in love with spirits; and her husband Suwelo, who tries hard but simply does not understand her. Out of the telling of their stories emerges a glorious and iridescent fabric, a strand connecting all their lives and former lives and seeming to pull all of existence into its folds. Walker's characters are magnetic, even with their all-to-human flaws and stumblings; they seem to contain the world, and to do it justice. Highly recommended.- Jessica Grim, Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

ANNOTATION

Filled with the author's unique combination of magic and reality, this book is a sweeping yet intimate novel about people who are tormented by the world's contradictions--black vs. white, man vs. woman, sexual freedom vs. sexual slavery, and past vs. present. National Ads. (Trade)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Filled with the author's unique combination of magic and reality, this book is a sweeping yet intimate novel about people who are tormented by the world's contradictions--black vs. white, man vs. woman, sexual freedom vs. sexual slavery, and past vs. present. (Trade)

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Part love story, part fable, part feminist manifesto, part political statement, Walker's novel follows a cast of interrelated characters, most of them black. and each representing a differ ent ethnic strain that contributes to the black experience in America. Marred by didacticism, theorizing and pontificating, ``the book never achieves the narrative power of The Color Purple ,'' noted PW . (May)

Ursula K. Le Guin

The richness of Alice Walker's new novel is amazing, overwhelming. A hundred themes and subjects spin through it, dozens of characters, a whirl of time and places. Men are touched superficially: all the people are passionate actors and sufferers, and everything they talk about is urgent, a matter truly of life and death. They're like Dostoyevsky's characters, relentlessly raising the great moral questions and pushing one another toward self-knowledge, honesty, inducement. -- The San Francisco Review of Books

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING