The Healing

Rating:
Summary: Harlan, heal my eyes
Review: Gayl Jones' folktale is an engaging enough story. In spite of this, I was immensely frustrated while reading through it. The main character, the spiritual "Healer", is named Harlan. Similar to many other books I have read in the past, this book contains a lot of dialogue between the main character and other minor ones. Unlike any other novel I have read, the author chooses not to include any dialogue related punctuation in her work. This makes for a pretty confusing read. It was not until around page ten that I learned that there even was a difference between Harlan's personal thoughts and her numerous conversations. Jones also includes conversations other people have about Harlan in her novel. With a standard novel, this would not pose a problem to the reader. Nevertheless, with The Healing, it made for a struggling read. Since most of these conversations seemed crucial to Harlan's character development I felt guilty skipping over some of them. After a while, my eyes hurt. The absence of quotations is an interesting device, but, not worth the patience it requires. The Healing receives one star because the plot is fantastic. Harlan's grandmother is a dynamic character, and I found Harlan's journey to becoming a "healer" very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Confabulatory Realism
Review: Something told me I should read this book. What had initially caught my attention were the news stories about Jones and her husband. But the descriptions I was reading of The Healing also made me curious, and when I read the first page of the book, I immediately found better reasons for wanting to read it. I enjoyed the time I spent privileged to overhear the constant chatter passing through main character Harlan Jane Eagleton's head, repetitions and all. I laughed at the long, omnivorous reading lists put together by her client Joan. (I recognized some of my friends and myself in that.) This is a very funny book, a mythic--a confabulatory--tale written with a great deal of literary sophistication. And if you like this one, make sure you read Mosquito too.

Rating:
Summary: Here's a description of the book:
Review: The Healing is a lyrical and at times humorous exploration of the struggle to let go of pain, anger, and even love. Slipping seamlessly back through Harlan's memories in a language rich with the textured cadences of the black Southerner, Gayl Jones weaves her story to its dramatic -and unexpected- beginning.

Rating:
Summary: Wanted to love it but couldn't.
Review: This was my reading group's April selection.Our group reads only Black authors but we had not heard of this sister; we consider ourselves well-read. The facilitator for this offering did her research and was able to enlighten us about Ms.Jones. We were disappointed in this book, to say the least, and amazed at the glowing reviews it received. We are still trying to figure out her point, her premise. We found the book, as a group, pretentious, spotty ,pointlessly wandering and much, much too disjointed. Her use of so- called black vernacular was unlike any we were familiar with, and almost all of us are Southerners by birth. Some of us are going to read her other works before we say forget it.