KEY POINTS:
The first thing that stands out in this brilliant collection of 14 short stories is that they seem like effortlessly compressed novels. Not only are many long and contain myriad characters, they also manage to encompass present, past and future, even in the confines of one beautifully crafted sentence.
In the hands of a lesser writer, this could be precious and gimmicky. But Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner for the extraordinary The Known World, his first novel about a black man who owned slaves, has been compared to Alice Munro in his ability to sustain a complex world without sacrificing the intimacy emblematic of the short story.
Here he returns to the streets, buildings and communities of his native Washing-ton DC. For black Americans who migrated north from the rural south, the city was an eldorado of possibility. Yet, as stated in the heart-rending dedication to his mother, who found far less than even the little she hoped for, his characters struggle to find fulfilment. The humiliations of slavery and entrenched racism always lurk. But the divisions are not necessarily of black against white. In Bad Neighbours, it is the black, upwardly mobile families who conspire to throw out the impoverished, foul-mouthed Benningtons, who remind them of where they came from.
The pull of the south is evoked in several stories, most notably in Root Worker, where a doctor whose mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease is forced to acknowledge the healing power of folk wisdom. In the title story, a weary detective is entrusted with finding the killer of the son of his mother's friend. But he is more interested in decoding the words of an unknown Russian Jewish woman who died in his arms. How Jones pulls off such diverse storylines to reveal nuggets of truth is a tribute to his superb talent.
*Harper Collins, $25.99
- Extra, HoS
