Overview

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY IRENOSEN OKOJIE By the bestselling author of The Women of Brewster Place With its showcase homes and manicured lawns, an address in the wealthy Black American neighbourhood of Linden Hills is a symbol that you've made it. The ultimate achievement: a home on prestigious Tupelo Drive. Making your way downhill to Tupelo is irrefutable proof of your worth. But the farther down the hill you go, the emptier you become and the price of success may well be a journey down to the lowest circle of hell. As two young friends - poets from the wrong side of town - look to earn extra money doing odd jobs in Linden Hills, their warmth, humour and disbelief exposes the hypocrisy of life on the 'right' side of the tracks. Exploring a microcosm of race and social class, Gloria Naylor reveals the true cost of success for the lost souls of Linden Hills. 'Gloria Naylor is gifted with timeless wisdom, bottomless empathy, and limitless language. Her novels will shine a light for readers and writers for generations to come' Tayari Jones, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE 'Naylor's skill in weaving together culture, heartbreak, joy, magic, terror, laughter, pain, and love - which is to say, life - is extraordinary' Robert Jones, Jr., author of THE PROPHETS 'Naylor has produced an ambitious novel that aspires to be nothing less than a contemporary reading of Dante's 'Inferno' . . . One is quickly beguiled . . . so gracefully does Naylor fuse together the epic and the naturalistic, the magical and the real' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

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Reviews

By letting her mythic imagination spring free from the constraints of old-fashioned realism, Naylor has produced an ambitious novel that aspires to be nothing less than a contemporary reading of Dante's 'Inferno' ... One is quickly beguiled ... so gracefully does Naylor fuse together the epic and the naturalistic, the magical and the real -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times * Naylor's humour, both sad and satiric, is distinctive; Willie and Lester are vital, earthy, boisterously irreverent guides . . . this is a haunting homiletic-with a cohesive strength of statement concerning Black aspiration within a tarnished American Dream * Kirkus * Gloria Naylor is gifted with timeless wisdom, bottomless empathy, and limitless language. Her novels will shine a light for readers and writers for generations to come -- Tayari Jones, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE Irrefutably, Gloria Naylor was one of the greatest novelists who ever lived. Every single one of her works was masterful, crafted with the kind of rare artistic brilliance that places her in extremely limited company. She is likely best known for her National Book Award-winning debut work, The Women of Brewster Place, but that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Whether the divine Bailey's Cafe, the haunting Linden Hills, or the exquisite Mama Day (one of my favorite novels of all-time), Naylor's skill in weaving together culture, heartbreak, joy, magic, terror, laughter, pain, and love-which is to say, life-is extraordinary. There is something both mundane and cosmic about her writing that captures the human condition in a way that perhaps no other writer did or will. Her work is, for me, a shout, a praisesong, a hosanna, a hallelujah, a Black fist in the air; ase! She holds a hallowed place in the canon, and also in hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits. She was one of the blessed ones -- Robert Jones, Jr., author of The New York Times bestselling novel, THE PROPHETS

Author Information

Gloria Naylor (1950-2016) was born in New York City. She received her B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and her M.A. in Afro-American studies from Yale. Her books include The Women of Brewster Place, which won both the American Book Award and the National Book Award for first novel and was also adapted into a film by Oprah Winfrey; Linden Hills; Mama Day; Bailey's Cafe and The Men of Brewster Place. She taught writing and literature at George Washington University, New York University, Boston University, and Cornell University.

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