Cinder - Softcover

French, Albert

3.56

18 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0436204673 ISBN 13: 9780436204678

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2007

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Banes, Mississippi, 1938. The Catfish creek separates the Patch from the town, black from white. These worlds and their prejudices are hauntingly evoked in the rich accents of the American South. Cinder is a woman who belongs to neither, her beauty marking her out as different.

Time passes slowly, and the inhabitants of Banes follow the same daily rhythm as they have done for years. Shorty sweeps up in Mister Macky's store, then drinks his wages at LeRoy's bar, men sit spitting outside the Rosey Gray, old people watch the world go by from their porches. But one quiet Sunday morning, when the bombs are dropped on Pearl Harbor, change comes to this small Mississippi town.

Spanning four years, Cinder is the follow-up to Albert French's outstanding novel Billy. It is at once the story of a woman whose life has been torn apart by tragedy, and the portrait of a town divided. It is about loss, community, history and the ties that bind.

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Review:

"a valuable addition to the chronicle of African American literature and is destined to become a literary classic" --THe Big Issue, April 16, 2007

An emotional read from start to finish, Cinder is a
heart-wrenching story of a woman's tragically torn life...
Comparable to the groundbreaking work of Toni Morrison, Cinder is a
valuable addition to the chronicle of African American literature and is
destined to become a literary classic.
--Big Issue

Rich with a rhythmic vernacular that stirs up direct comparisons
with William Faulkner's epic Southern novel As I Lay Dying, French's Cinder
is a historical novel whose prose style will hook you into its dark plot
about the economic, social and psychological impacts of racial segregation,
and in so doing will deepen your dismay at the institutionalised injustice
and bigotry. Amazing. --New Zealand Herald

From the Publisher:

The outstanding follow-up to Albert French's Billy (which Time magazine said 'may be the best first novel by a black author since Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye in 1969'), Cinder is a tale of racial division in Mississippi, leading up to and during WWII.

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