Sugar is often presented as Pearl’s foil, in the sense of the Yin and the Yang – two parts of a whole. No excuses this time, they had taken her way past courteous and dropped her off somewhere near I don’t give a damn!” Not feigning a headache or claiming that she had to rise early for church. “It was now obvious that they had pushed Pearl to the edge, she was ordering them to leave her house, to get out. In a pivotal scene McFadden teases the reader with a glimpse of Pearl’s smoldering core: Pearl, a quiet pillar of the small Arkansas town in which she lives and a picture of true Southern decorum, possesses an innate feminine strength that drives her to fiercely protect her own. Her protagonists are fully formed and in the round, which makes their growth and transformations all the more stark. The depth of McFadden’s vision for and understanding of her characters is awesome. Sunday afternoon found him snoring in his second favorite snoozing place, after the far side of the middle pew in Bigelow’s First Baptist Church, the part that was hidden by a column.”

“ He was asleep on the sofa, the television watching him, a half-empty glass of Coke sitting on the floor, the ice melting loudly within it, a half-eaten bologna sandwich on a plate next to the glass.

Her descriptions of the simplest, meaningless scenes are lush and palpable. McFadden’s writing is masterfully understated and yet filled with vivid imagery. I am cowed that such a prolific and expert voice escaped my (apparently narrow) notice. McFadden, after slugging through “jobs”, came to her “profession” in 2000 with this stunning debut and has since published eight more novels, all beloved and praised by her readers, as is evidenced by the fact that they all hold an average rating of 4 out of 5 or higher on Goodreads. I am so grateful that this Year of Reading Women project and my desire to highlight black women’s voices for the month of February led me to this brilliant author, yet I am abashed that it took this project for me to find her. McFadden’s writing and the women she has created here. Urn:oclc:45712032 Republisher_date 20120620151853 Republisher_operator Scandate 20120615072332 Scanner the breathtaking beauty and the relentless, quiet strength of Bernice L. OL18179975W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 92.86 Pages 240 Ppi 500 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0525945318 Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 22:10:54 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA148117 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Date-raw JanuDonorīostonpubliclibrary Edition 1st Plume pbk.

Bernice l mcfadden sugar