The Moaner's Bench

Rating:
Summary: Realistic and very moving
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. It showed in-depth the hardships of Africa-Americans in the South during the Depression. The stories in the book were realistic and moving. It brought back memories of my childhood. The ending is tear-jerking but entertaining. Great story. I recommend this book to any reader.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Memoir--Not Enough Conflict
Review: I loved the opening chapters which feature tremendous conflict for Sun such as: If he will find the miracle, how to express his love for his cousin, how to escape his uncle's wrath. Also, the use of dialect was superb. Unfortunately, the remainder of the book indulges in too much memoir like description of Sun's early life without resolving so many of the issues around Sun's need for love and healing.

Rating:
Summary: funny
Review: i really enjoyed this book, it was great. I liked sun's humor when describing people. I also enjoyed mr. derby's characther. i wish the book could have ended on a happier note though.

Rating:
Summary: funny
Review: i really enjoyed this book, it was great. I liked sun's humor when describing people. I also enjoyed mr. derby's characther. i wish the book could have ended on a happier note though.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The narrator, Sun Hughes, describes coming of age as the son of a successful merchant in a community of black Baptists in rural Arkansas. His early life is idyllic. He plays with his bad-boy friend Ben, teases the girls at school, and peeps in the keyhole at his sister and her beau. Then the Depression hits, Sun's father dies, and Sun is sent to live with a harsh, self-righteous uncle. On the brink of manhood, Sun chafes against his new, restricted life, but he's still eager to face another day. Although it is billed as a novel, "The Moaner's Bench" appears to be a slightly fictionalized memoir. However, its scope is broader than that of most memoirs, encompassing not only the events in Sun's life, but the whole fabric of his community. It includes houses and cars; mules and goats and pigs; the Crash of 1929; harvests and locusts and rocky, red Arkansas clay. Best of all, it includes people. Sun's neighbors and relatives span the human spectrum. He knows strivers and loafers, cuckolds and polygamists, deacons and drunks. He knows Tuskegee graduates. He knows an ex-slave who prides himself on being able to calculate the product of 1250 and nine by taking a stick and adding 1250 nine times in the dirt. None of these characters are stock types. Each is allowed to reveal his or her rich, contradictory human complexity though action and speech. "Sorghum was like most fruits, vegetables, and nuts: each stalk had a different taste," Hill writes. In the same way, he notices and savors the uniqueness of each event, each person. Readers are lucky that a writer of such discernment and enthusiasm has applied his gifts to a piece of America's past.