Rating: 
Summary: Incredible
Review: A heart-wrenchingly splendid book that will make you cry and make you smile at the same time. Life-affirming, devastating, a masterpiece in form and function.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting montage
Review: A riveting first novel that darks to write about the stuff of melodrama, and yet never slips into sentimentality. It accomplishes this because the stories are all too real. The tragedy of these women's lives we see even today in the news and on the streets around us. These are the kinds of stories that make up a revolution, except the revolution has passed. The revolution had a dream at its center: a world where all had the same chances. But that dream has been on hold--deferred, as the Langston Hughes poem that serves as an epigraph to this "novel" puts it. In fact, Naylor is responding to that idea--where is the dream now?I had to put novel in quotes above because this really is a montage (echoes of the Hughes poem once again). In science fiction, they call these novels that are made by linking short stories together a "fix-up," but that really does not fit this well, possibly because Naylor planned it this way, rather than cobbling it together as an afterthought. Predating Amistaud Maupin's Tales of the City, a similar collection of tales about the occupants of one building, its depiction of the various women who find themselves in the last place that will take them, a slum tenement building on a dead end street, is gripping and emotionally moving. These women are not perfect-- Naylor's heroes all have tragic flaws--but the general feeling you get is not that they are necessarily their own downfall, but as much a victim of the society that they find themselves a part of. Even in the worst case, Cora Lee, there's something there to pity, and possibly, gain new understanding.
Rating:
Summary: The Women of Brewster Place
Review: A wonderful novel -- enjoyed the reading and also got me thinking about the issues concerning African-American women. I am looking forward to reading other novels by Gloria Naylor.
Rating: 
Summary: A chapter apiece for the ladies of Brewster Place
Review: Gloria Naylor's book reads fast, just like life is lived on the little dead end street known as Brewster Place. Really a series of inter-connected short stories, it can easily be read a chapter at a time, cuz each character gets her own chapter. While not all the characters are thoroughly likeable, they all have plenty of redeeming qualities. Focusing not only on the women's trials and tribulations, Naylor also delves into the history and background that came before, contributing to each woman's present situation. These women, mostly abandoned or cast off by the men in their lives, struggle to make a sense of community from a handful of hopes and dreams.
Rating:
Summary: Descriptive writing makes this work...
Review: Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place is a relatively fast read about the lives of the women who live in a dilapadated housing complex on a dead end street. Naylor's symbolism and writing style makes this not only accessible reading, but enjoyable. The characters range from unlikable to almost saintly in their descriptions. Although presented as several short stories, they do complete a coherent novel with the same characters throughout. What I enjoyed was that Naylor did not simply focus upon the hardships involved with living in Brewster, but the motivations behind the "cases". I think she did a great job providing us with women from different backgrounds, all ending up in the same place, with different hopes and dreams for themselves. Men do play a substantial part in the happiness or lack thereof for the characters. Although other reviewers disliked this about the book, I think it is sadly realistic. Part of the culture of the day that this book is set in is that women didn't have the same opportunities, especially without a husband. I think it affects the mindset of the community and in general, the women resent men, but realize they need them, and are angered by that. I enjoyed this book...and I would recommend it. I found that the descriptions and backgrounds of the women at Brewster Place were very interesting, and gave me some insight to a culture that we prefer to forget about - that is - the women left without husbands (or with "bad" ones...) in a time when women were supposed to rely on these men who abandoned them. It's about finding something within to fill the gaps that society doesn't provide for. The women try to make a community out of a group of unfulfilled dreamers, of a group of people that don't really understand eachother, and become self-reliant women. And of course, get out of Brewster Place.
Rating:
Summary: Too Jumpy
Review: Good story, but jumps around too much between characters. Gives more of a character sketch on a different character in each "chapter". Overall, a very good book.
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Summary: Will someone PLEASE give gloria naylor her props???
Review: I have loved this book for a very, very long time. I think it shows the same beauty as Toni Morrison's writing but is considerably more accessible to those who don't consider themselves academics or intellectuals. I don't know WHY gloria naylor doesn't get the attention she deserves. While there have been some implications that this is a "man bashing" book, I don't see that at all. I see an honest look at SOME women's lives and SOME women's relationships with men, SOME of whom happening to be quite triffling. This story is not of a universal experience but it does delve into the universal emotions of longing, loneliness, dissapointment and, finally, joy and self-acceptance.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: I really liked this book. I had to read it in a college lit course - "Women in Contemporary American Literature" - and expected to hate it. To my surprise, the book's unique format, multiple narrators, and interesting situations hooked me and held my attention. The book is about realistic people with real problems and real lives. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: I really liked this book. I had to read it in a college lit course - "Women in Contemporary American Literature" - and expected to hate it. To my surprise, the book's unique format, multiple narrators, and interesting situations hooked me and held my attention. The book is about realistic people with real problems and real lives. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Loved By A White Male
Review: I remember female classmates telling me that, as a white male, I could never understand this book. In one sense, they were right. I don't read a lot of books by black females. But, in another sense, they were dead wrong. Gloria Naylor gives lie to the notion that authors and readers must be bound by their self-stereotypes and that persons of diverse racial or economic backgrounds cannot understand each other. This book is beautiful. Yes, the majority of characters are black women from the ghetto. But, like true literature, this book isn't really about so select a group. The experiences and feelings of these women are transcendent - transcendent because they are "real" persons first and black women second. For example, Naylor describes the grief a young mother suffers for an infant who has died after sticking its finger into an electric socket. The grief Naylor captures is universal. If mystics have experiences in which they have such joy it makes them feel one with the universe, then Naylor does the same thing here, only with pain. And isn't this what literature is supposed to do: make us understand ourselves better by showing life as someone else, someone who may be 100% different than us? And by gaining a glimpse that perhaps we are not as different from others as we assumed, don't we join the world a little more?
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