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Summary: Sex, Love, and More Love!
Review: This was a great story about what it can be like in a non-traditional world, wherre man meets owmna, man falls in love, and faults are all forgotten about! It a true tory of friendship, love, and peac in an other wise chaotic world. I loved the story line too, you have your bad, good, and even worse folks through out the sotry...who knowa what may happen next! I gauraentee uyou'll enjoy thi story!
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Summary: Lush and sensual - simply beautiful!
Review: I loved this book from the moment I started reading it. The story is about Ava, an African American woman who moves from Atlanta back to her hometown of Idlewild, Michigan after finding out that she is HIV positive. Her visit to Idlewild is supposed to be just a stopover on her trip to San Francisco, where she expects to find a female lover (for the first time) and acceptance of her HIV status. Instead, she finds comfort in the warm, snuggly love of her big sister Joyce. She finds hope and purpose in the work that Joyce is doing to save the youth in Idlewild from the spiraling existence of drugs, pregnancy, welfare, and violence. But best of all, she finds true love.Pearl Cleage writes in a very efficient, yet effective style, conveying in a few words what lesser writers struggle to convey in whole paragraphs. Her ability to create an atmosphere of comfort, lush sensuality, or stark horror is remarkable. She writes with wit and honesty, even when describing the pain so often found in life. She perfectly captures the essence of her characters and the roller-coaster of emotion that they experience in the story. I truly cared about these people, so that in the end I cried tears of sadness, outrage, and happiness, all in the space of an hour! I can't wait to tell my friends about this gift of a book.
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Summary: Finally! A book that tells the truth!
Review: When I started this book, my mother said, "Oh, that's too graphic for a 14-year-old to be reading." In truth, it isn't. This isn't some trashy novel filled with meaningless sex that you'll never remember. This novel is thoughtful, provocative, but most importantly it tells the truth. It not only tells you about AIDS, HIV and safe sex without sounding preachy and false, but it shows the real life struggles of human character that good people, whether from a small town like Idlewild or a huge city like Detroit, share, and work against. This is a book of tears, triumph, and love. This a book that every teen should read because it shows the straight facts but isn't at all like those little pamphlets that they pass out at school that preach to you, "Don't do this," "Don't do that." This book is powerful.
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Summary: Everyone can relate to the Crazy Ordinary days
Review: After escaping Michigan to live in Atlanta, the main character finds herself returning to the small town of Idlewild, Michigan to start over. This book moves quickly yet covers a lot of ground in one summer of her life where she finds her business has failed and social life abandoned in Atlanta. She comes home to find that the more things change the more they stay the same. The characters are descriptive and familiar. We all know people like the ones she encounters in the small town life of Northern Michigan. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
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Summary: Sensitive subject, honest writing
Review: This book discusses a very sensitive subject, AIDS, from a humerous and honest point of view and kept me laughing and crying along with the characters. I felt these people were friends of mine and really spoke their mind, rather than edited thoughts. This black family reunited in a difficult time pulls through, together.
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Summary: Great title, great story.
Review: I read this novel in just a few days. It was humorous and serious, entertaining and and heartbeaking all at the same time. Ava Johnson, the protagonist, has just returned home to Idlewood after ten years of living the wild life in Atlanta. Although she plans to stay only the summer with her sister, Joyce, numerous events in both their lives sway her decision and she chooses instead to remain in her home town. Full of life and spunk, Ava is a delightful person to get to know and her sister, Joyce, the sort of woman we all wish we could be, passionate and courageous as well. If ever we are to become better as a human race, it will be because of people like these two sisters.
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Summary: Definitely not ordinary
Review: What all inspiring novel. In today's world of mishaps and misconceptions this book is one that reaches all races and backgrounds. It is a love story entertwined with the harsh realities of the inability of the African-American church to deal with the daily reminders of a sex-crazed world. We must be reminded on a continual basis that education about the deadly virus HIV and the disease AIDS is key and if we are indulated with knowledge we will become more enlightened and responsible about sexual promiscuity.
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Summary: Entertaining...
Review: This book is entertaining from beginning to end. I wasn't sure I would enjoy this book because I don't have anything in common with the main character. However, it didn't matter at all! Ava Johnson is so likeable that you find yourself cheering her on! This book is a very relaxing way to spend a rainy afternoon!
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Summary: Hate that it had to end!
Review: Ava Johnson is trying to drink her troubles away. She's sold her once thriving beauty salon business and is headed home for Idlewild, MI. Ava has HIV and is taking a trip home before moving on to San Francisco where people are more informed about HIV and AIDS. The trip home proves to be a lot more than she bargained for and it all starts on the ride home when her sister Joyce sends a family friend, Eddie to pick her up at the airport. The once thriving black resort community of Idlewild is a shadow of its former self. Crime, crack and an increase in teen pregnancy have all but wiped out the glory days of the community in which Dinah Washington and Sammy Davis Jr. once performed. In this setting, as tragic as it may sound, Ava learns lessons about perseverance, from baby Imani, serving mankind from her sister Joyce, hypocrisy from the religious right and love from guess who? Cleage leaves you shaking your head in disgust at the displays of ignorance and laughing at the games people play. All the characters, the relationships and the issues of class, race, violence against women and ignorance concerning HIV and AIDS are discussed with great honesty and humor. You won't want this story to end.
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Summary: Fallin' in love for the first time
Review: This was truly a great book and a quick read. I just couldn't put the book down. I read at work and all during the day (it took me only two days to read the entire book). Ava Johnson's character was very strong, likeable and realistic. She was a strong black woman. I too, fell in love with Eddie; he is the type of man I want to fall in love with, marry, and spend the rest of my life fallin' in love over and over again. Joyce was also a very powerful, strong, likeable character that anyone would be proud to call "sister." My sister is alot like Joyce, so I could definitely relate to their (Ava and Joyce) relationship. Cleage made such an otherwise serious topic very personal, yet respectable. Read it, it's great!
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