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Summary
Summary
From the New York Times Bestselling Author of An American Marriage
"A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones's skill for wry understatement never wavers."
-- O: The Oprah Magazine
" Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I'll never forget. This is a book I'll read more than once."
-- Judy Blume
With the opening line of Silver Sparrow , "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed "one of the most important writers of her generation" ( the Atlanta Journal Constitution ).
Author Notes
Tayari Jones was born on November 30, 1970 in Atlanta Georgia. She attended Spelman College, University of Iowa, and the University of Georgia. She later attended Arizonia State University to earn her MFA. She went on to teach creative writing at the University of Illinois and George Washington University.
Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, was written in 2002 while she was a graduate student at Arizonia State University. It was about the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981.Her other title's include: The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage. She has been awarded the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, the Lillian Smith Book Award, and the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A coming-of-age story of sorts, Jones's melodramatic latest (after The Untelling) chronicles the not-quite-parallel lives of Dana Lynn Yarboro and Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon in 1980s Atlanta. Both girls-born four months apart-are the daughters of James Witherspoon, a secret bigamist, but only Dana and her mother, Gwen, are aware of his double life. This, Dana surmises, confers "one peculiar advantage" to her and Gwen over James's other family, with whom he lives full time, though such knowledge is small comfort in the face of all their disadvantages. Perpetually feeling second best, 15-year-old Dana takes up with an older boy whose treatment of her only confirms her worst expectations about men. Meanwhile, Chaurisse enjoys the easy, uncomplicated comforts of family, and though James has done his utmost to ensure his daughters' paths never cross, the girls, of course, meet, and their friendship sets their worlds toward inevitable (and predictable) collision. Set on its forced trajectory, the novel piles revelation on revelation, growing increasingly histrionic and less believable. For all its concern with the mysteries of the human heart, the book has little to say about the vagaries of what motivates us to love and lie and betray. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In her third novel set in Atlanta, Jones (The Untelling, 2005, etc.) writes about two African-American half sisters, only one of whom knows that the other exists until their father's double life starts to unravel.When James Witherspoon, the owner of a successful limousine service, and Gwendolyn Yarboro have their marriage ceremony in 1969 four months after the birth of their baby Dana, Gwen knows that James already has a wife and an even younger baby. While James, who visits regularly if never often enough, and Gwen, a practical nurse, make sure Dana has every middle-class advantage, Dana grows up aware that her parents' "marriage" is a secret and that she cannot openly claim her father; James' devoted stepbrother Raleigh is listed on her birth certificate. Gwen and Dana habitually spy on James' legitimate wife Laverne and daughter Chaurisse, who live in blissful ignorance of James's bigamy. By adolescence, Dana, who attends a prestigious magnate high school and wants to attend Mount Holyoke, increasingly resents the plainer, less gifted Chaurisse, whose needs always seem to come first for James. After meeting Chaurisse by accident at a science fair, Dana finds ways for their paths to intersect. When she finally "befriends" Chaurisse, Chaurisse is thrilled that a popular girl likes her enough to visit her at home. Visits happen during hours Dana knows James will not be there. Dana's adolescent plans, for acceptance as much as revenge, inevitably go awry, but this is less a tragedy than a case of survival and making do. While Dana is at the novel's center, Jones gives both girls' points of view, allowing readers to empathize with each of James's families. Chaurisse may not know about Dana, but she is far from blissful in her ignorance, and her mother Laverne has endured more than her fair share of suffering. James is harder to fathom but also hard to hate.Jones beautifully evokes Atlanta in the 1980s while creating gritty, imperfect characters whose pain lingers in the reader's heart.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Jones' expansive third novel, following The Untelling (2005), is set in 1980s middle-class Atlanta, where Dana Yarboro grows up knowing that her father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist. Told in two parts, the first chronicles the complex nature of Dana's family dynamics as part of James' illicit life. Dana's mother, Gwendolyn, is intensely focused on Dana's future as well as on James' legitimate wife and daughter an obsession that wears on Dana, who tires of being considered . secret. At the same time, Dana's half sister, Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon, grows up seemingly unaware of any indiscretions, enjoying a comfortable adolescence under the watch of her overprotective father and hardworking mother. James, with the help of a lifelong friend, does his best to keep the two families apart. Nonetheless, Dana finds a way to befriend Chaurisse without her parents' knowledge, and the teenagers' relationship threatens to put their families on intersecting paths. Jones effectively blends the sisters' varied, flawed perspectives as the characters struggle with presumptions of family and the unwieldy binds of love and identity.--Strauss, Lea. Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
"My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist." That knockout opening sentence launches readers into a gripping family drama about two African American half sisters (only one is aware of the other) and the father who tries to keep them apart. A sensitive and beautifully written coming-of-age novel with a twist. (LJ 2/15/11) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.