I Get on the Bus: A Novel - Softcover

McKnight, Reginald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316560588 ISBN 13: 9780316560580

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1992

Synopsis

Evan Norris, a disaffected, young, Black American, travels to Senegal, contracts malarial fever, and is taken in by a Senegalese family, a contact leading to brushes with the occult, a romantic liaison, and self-discovery

About this title

From Library Journal

Evan Norris, a young black from a well-to-do family residing in the suburbs of Denver, notes that "the black people we did know were not like us. They were nervous about their blackness. They were, I think, ashamed of it. And shame is the pivot that leads . . . black folks to madness." The words prove ironic, for it is Evan who will suffer most from a lack of identity, who is "nervous" about his blackness, and who finds himself driven to the edge of madness. His search for self takes him via the Peace Corps to Senegal, where, rather than finding his roots, he comes to realize how alien they are to him. He contracts malaria, suffers hallucinations, and is used by the local marabou--a kind of shaman--as a pawn in an elaborate game of revenge. Evan's tragedy is that of a man caught between cultures. Without a "soul" of his own, he is doomed, as the marabou perceives, to eat the souls of others. In some respects reminiscent of John Fowles's The Magus , this first novel is not easy reading. It unfolds slowly, perhaps a bit too slowly, but those who persevere will find it rewarding. For serious fiction collections.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

McKnight's ( Moustapha's Eclipse ) first novel is set in Senegal, where Evan Norris, a restless Afro-American from Denver, has wandered to escape his comfortable middle-class existence and near-engagement to a racially aware, black American psychiatrist. Recruited by the Peace Corps, he fights off malarial fever while wondering, "Am I black enough now . . . ?" Quitting the Corps, Norris then drifts "half-bemused, half-terrified" through a series of surreal experiences punctuated by nightmarish bus rides. Exhausted, he ends up in a tiny village, where he is cared for by the family of a marabou , or holy man. There Norris becomes lost in a contemplation of the forces that have shaped him, a growing paranoia about evil spirits and a steamy relationship with the marabou's beautiful, American-educated daughter. Winner of the 1988 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, McKnight writes in an incantatory, original voice about the struggle for black identity. While his protagonist at times wallows in self-pity, and his plot leans heavily on the exotic, the volume offers a riveting, dramatic vision of the oft-told story of returning to one's roots.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316560588
• ISBN 13: 9780316560580
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304