Rating: 
Summary: A "just-gotta-read-it" for Americana.
Review: "Linden Hills" is a "just-gotta-read-it." Gloria Naylor's expression of the American Dream is keen, sharp and clean. The story itself is well worth the price; the "truths" make this a bargain.
Rating:
Summary: Making it to the top?
Review: Although this book is the followup to Dante's Inferno, I read it first. It is a haunting tale of black people making it to the top. The protagonist in this story is Luther Nedeed. Mr. Nedeed's family moved to Linden Hills(an area no one wanted to be associated with) made it into a funeral home, and eventually starting building cabins and renting them out. Over the years the little community grew and everybody wanted to live in Linden Hills,even the whites who wouldn't asscociate with it at first. Everyone thought that living in Linden Hills was making it, when in fact they were selling their souls for material things.................. You have to read it to find out the rest!!! Very good haunting story. Makes you wonder about your lifestyle.
Rating: 
Summary: Home is Where Your Hell Is
Review: Borrowing its theme and structure from Dante's Inferno, Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills deals with the destructive path of upwardly mobile suburban blacks as they plunge into a world of progressive meaninglessness and material "possession." And there is a connection to Graham Swift's Waterland: the need for stories and story-telling at the root of, describing our being. Before the very successful exectuive Laurel plunges thirty feet to her death, she requests her 80-year-old grandmother Roberta to tell her stories of growing up, to give her substance and meaning to her empty existence.In this work about black people, about a northeast town owned and built by the owners of the local morgue, resentment is endemic. "A wad of spit-a beautiful, black wad of spit right in the white eye of America." Post-slavery politics and the ironies of culture in America, racial prejudice and segragation and class conflicts, even within the African-American community, and the preciousness of the imagination and of free expression are at the heart of this book. Run by five generations of morgue caretakers, the Luther Needed family are the replacements for white oppression in an all-black town. The frog-like Luthers always married a pale bride who spewed forth a miniature Luther frog, that is, until Willa Prescott Nedeed, who is dark herself, but bares a pale sickly creature unnamed and unwanted by his father, is taught to spell Sinclair by his mother. The story covers the course of six days. One way Naylor deconstructs the official history is in her attempt to subvert linear notions of causation, which is a post-modernist reaction to the traditional Aristotelian linear narrative form. Not only does Naylor fuse together various parts of narratively disjointed fiction into one integrated whole, she also, through language, fuses "memory" to a present reality to create an integrated whole. This happens again: The day after Willie's prophetic dream of a missing face, "he swung himself down the ladder at the far end, the high aquamarine walls looming over him as he ran. Pink and beige stains were slowly spreading form Laurel's body into the surrounding snow. From the angle of the neck, she couldn't possibly be alive, but he had the irrational fear that she might be suffocating...Without thinking, he turned her over."
While Willie experiences the memory of this prophetic dream come to life, Naylor switches scenes-and typeface- to allow Willa, still locked captive in the basement, to complete the fusion of memory with a present reality by speaking the words that Willie would have said: "Her face was gone." Naylor's book shows how people's nonquestioning, their acceptance and passivity-impulses opposed to the world creation of the artist-get them in trouble. Hers is a world of essential homelessness, of beings uprooted, torn from the bedrock of their homeland and thrown into modern America. In attempting to put black man's mark upon the new world, the townspeople of Linden Hills are more apt to put a black mark on the new world-a black mark that is more like the white devils they are trying to counter than any hopeful ideal. Naylor shows that the enemy is within or, at the limit, that there is no enemy. Things are not black and white or, there is black in white, white in black. The miscegenation has already always begun. At once a work of questioning, and one embracing the colorful revisionism of an artist dealing in the human materials of desperation, Naylor's message is cryptically hopeful: "an ebony jewel that reflected the soul of Wayne County but reflected it black."
Rating:
Summary: It was great...
Review: Gloria Naylor's writing style may be too involved for some, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. This book makes you think about classism, racism, sexism and all the other ism's. It's my favorite out of all of her books.
Rating:
Summary: Layers of hell
Review: I first read this book for an AP english class my senior year of high school, shortly after we had read _The Inferno_. It's a very beautiful book, although indeed sometimes the gorgeous writing is describing some very painful things. Naylor seems to have the ability to delineate her character's inner self with very revealing language - the pastor who serves his flock but also is an alcoholic, the young gay man who must marry a woman or risk losing a prosperous future. The story deals with how people trap themselves, put themselves into hell - the Satan-figure hardly needs to act to ensnare them because they're too busy snaring themselves. Very powerful, very moving, very good book that reads smoothly.
Rating:
Summary: Layers of hell
Review: I first read this book for an AP english class my senior year of high school, shortly after we had read _The Inferno_. It's a very beautiful book, although indeed sometimes the gorgeous writing is describing some very painful things. Naylor seems to have the ability to delineate her character's inner self with very revealing language - the pastor who serves his flock but also is an alcoholic, the young gay man who must marry a woman or risk losing a prosperous future. The story deals with how people trap themselves, put themselves into hell - the Satan-figure hardly needs to act to ensnare them because they're too busy snaring themselves. Very powerful, very moving, very good book that reads smoothly.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting
Review: I have to admit, when I first started reading this book, I thought it was weird. Then I realized what was going on and thought it was one of the best books I've read in a long time. Now I plan to read the rest of Gloria Naylor's books. Very though provoking and real. Everyone should read this book. Everyone!!
Rating:
Summary: this is one of the best books i have read in a while
Review: i just loved how the book was set up and developed
Rating:
Summary: A unique and original novel ¿ I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Review: In this thought-provoking and beautifully written novel, Gloria Naylor explores complex issues of social class within the parameters of a black affluent community. While on the outside the residents of Linden Hills seem to revel in the glamorous lifestyles and social status they work so hard to obtain, the reality is quite different. Naylor allows the reader a glimpse behind the Porches and the Beverly Hills style mansions into the souls of several Linden Hills residents. With each one of their stories we begin to understand the price paid for material success. Naylor makes some interesting connections between the accumulation of wealth and loss of racial identity. A unique and original novel - I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Linden Hills is a frightening flip side of "making it".
Review: Linden Hills is a timeless book about "success", andthe frightening consequences of selling out to "the highestbidder". The story portrays the tragically successful neighborhood of Linden Hills, 3 generations deep in Black progess and the American dream. But now, as Luther Nedeed tries to keep up his father's and grandfather's traditions in the modern times, it becomes fragmented and falls apart. Now, instead of requiring only the work of the residents, Linden Hills wants their very dreams and souls: A young lawyer must give up the love of his life for a sham of a marriage, a preacher gives up the word of God for power and pretention, a young businesswoman lets the world tell her what's important instead of looking inside herself until it's too late. And 2 young men from both sides of the tracks discover the horrid reality and lead to its demise as they work their way through the neighborhood for holiday spending money. Incredible, prophetic, educa! ting book.!!!READ IT!!!!
|
