Review: Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Found this book on the New York Times notable list, but it was hard to miss - it seems to be a publisher's darling with great publicity. With good reason - this was a devastating story. It was about a black family in Mississippi - while the mother is addicted to drugs (and to her incarcerated (white) husband), her adolescent son takes good care of his younger sister and their grandparents look after both of them. The bulk of the book takes place on a road trip the mother takes the kids on to retrieve her husband from prison, though there are flashbacks to each of their stories, and some other plotlines woven in.

This was just a beautiful novel - just the right length, alternating voices, and excellent, just excellent, description of relationships. I found some parts hard to read because of their tenderness and how broken some of the relationships were, but that was just a sign of its poignancy and its rich description.

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