Synopsis
The interweaving of voices marks a study of life in small-town America, where colorless, prejudiced lives can be affected by love, as the story of Loretta and Luthor, an interracial couple who first appeared in White Girls, continues. A first novel.
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Reviews
For her short first novel, Lauber returns to the setting and the central situation (an interracial romance) of her story collection, White Girls (l989). We are in the same small town (Union, Ohio) among the same characters: Loretta, the white teenager captivated by soul music and ghetto life; Luther, her black fellow student, who looks to Loretta for casual sex but finds love instead; and Luther's mother Annie, that rock of Gibraltar, who warms to Loretta as the white girl hungers for her life-stories. But while the story collection was tightly focused through Loretta's narration, here Lauber reworks her material using multiple viewpoints. In addition to those of Loretta, Luther, and Annie, we have Junior Johnson, the black undertaker, who disowns daughter Elaine after she marries the unemployed Luther; Loretta's kid brother Louis, the natural conformist, who watches as Loretta is sent to a school for unwed mothers after Luther impregnates her; and Marcia Milner, the troubled white woman who adopts Loretta's baby but has no feeling for the child and eventually kills herself, ending up in Junior's funeral parlor. Years later, the middle-aged Louis describes a schmaltzy reconciliation of the survivors, a perfect Hollywood rainbow. Yet this journey through five households, in which peace is first shattered, then restored, counts for nothing beside Loretta's original journey--in the earlier book--across the color line to Annie's home on Sugar Street. That was felt from the inside, unlike the spiritual contortions of lost souls like the undertaker and the adoptive mother. More is less. Disappointing. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Returning in her debut novel to characters introduced in the short story collection White Girls ( LJ 2/15/90), Lauber continues her examination of the romance between Luther Biggs, a black mortician, and Loretta Dadio, a white girl who has his child out of wedlock. Loretta is sent away from their small Midwestern hometown to give up the baby for adoption, Luther marries another woman, and the ensuing complications fracture families and strain relationships for the next 20 years before climaxing in a melodramatic ending that unrealistically reunites all the characters. After a striking first chapter that shows the impact of a racist English teacher on a black boy's life, Lauber doesn't adequately develop characters and events in this slim volume. Her characters have the potential to be animated and deeply human, but they're too sketchily defined. Not essential for most collections.
- David A. Berona, Westbrook Coll. Lib., Portland, Me.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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21 Sugar Street
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21 Sugar Street (First Edition)
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21 Sugar Street
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21 Sugar Street
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hardcover. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. New York. 1993. Norton. 1st Printing. Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Mark. 0393034496. 239 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde, Jacket photographs by Melissa Hayden. keywords: American Literature Women. DESCRIPTION - Critically acclaimed in the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times, Lynn Lauber's first book, White Girls, announced the debut of a new and distinctive voice in American fiction. Now, in 21 Sugar Street, Lauber returns to Loretta Dardio and Luther Biggs, a white girl and a black boy whose brief but powerfully affecting love affair irrevocably changed their lives and those of their families in the racially divided town of Union, Ohio. Lauber paints a portrait of Union as mythic and resonant as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. In the twenty years that have passed since Loretta and Luther's high school affair, Loretta has given up their illegitimate daughter for adoption and escaped to New York, while Luther has continued to make a life for himself in Union. Through multiple perspectives we meet this long-divided couple and others: Junior Johnson, the town's black mortician and Luther's father-in-law; Louis Dardio, Loretta's straight-laced younger brother, who is at once charmed and appalled by his sister's independence and willfulness; Annie Biggs, Luther's warm-hearted mother, who remains faithful to Loretta and her child; Marcia Milner, the disturbed adoptive brother; and finally Kay, the fruit of Loretta and Luther's union, who as a young woman returns to bridge their divided world, a reminder in these racially troubled times of love's capacity to transform and heal. inventory #23772 Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Mark. Seller Inventory # z23772
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21 Sugar Street
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21 Sugar Street
Seller: zenosbooks, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
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hardcover. Condition: Very Good in Dustjacket. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. New York. 1993. Norton. 1st Printing. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0393034496. 239 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde, Jacket photographs by Melissa Hayden. keywords: American Literature Women. DESCRIPTION - Critically acclaimed in the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times, Lynn Lauber's first book, White Girls, announced the debut of a new and distinctive voice in American fiction. Now, in 21 Sugar Street, Lauber returns to Loretta Dardio and Luther Biggs, a white girl and a black boy whose brief but powerfully affecting love affair irrevocably changed their lives and those of their families in the racially divided town of Union, Ohio. Lauber paints a portrait of Union as mythic and resonant as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. In the twenty years that have passed since Loretta and Luther's high school affair, Loretta has given up their illegitimate daughter for adoption and escaped to New York, while Luther has continued to make a life for himself in Union. Through multiple perspectives we meet this long-divided couple and others: Junior Johnson, the town's black mortician and Luther's father-in-law; Louis Dardio, Loretta's straight-laced younger brother, who is at once charmed and appalled by his sister's independence and willfulness; Annie Biggs, Luther's warm-hearted mother, who remains faithful to Loretta and her child; Marcia Milner, the disturbed adoptive brother; and finally Kay, the fruit of Loretta and Luther's union, who as a young woman returns to bridge their divided world, a reminder in these racially troubled times of love's capacity to transform and heal. inventory #23758. Seller Inventory # z23758
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