Customer Reviews

River, Cross My Heart: A Novel

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

This is an enchanting novel about growing up in Georgetown in the 1920s. It is also an insight to life in the African-American culture back then. It is about a young girl finding her way in the times and finding her future and finding her voice. It is a thoroughly enjoyable novel ~~ beautifully written too.

Johnnie Mae loves to swim. She longs to swim at the all-white swimming pool instead of the Potomac River. She would stare at the swimmers at the pool which is across the street from her Aunt Ina's house. Always working and always watching out for her youngest sister, Johnnie Mae longs for more. Then when Clara, her sister drowned one afternoon when all the kids were swimming at the river, Johnnie Mae tries to deal with her guilt and memories. She befriends a new girl who reminded her of Rat ~~ the nickname she has bestowed on her sister ~~ and they grow up.

It is a neat insight to life back in the 1920s. It is beautifully written ~~ you see the world from Johnnie Mae's eyes as well as from her mother's eyes. It is a journey that lingers long after you've turned the last page. It's a book I highly recommend for everyone to read this summer! Perfect book for the poolside reading!

6-8-04

The book starts out slow, and it weaves its way through the past and present, which gets a little annoying. While it does have some feeling to it, and it does give a good insight to what life for african americans was like back then, I was for the most part dreadfully bored with the book. Not something I'd really recommend to people to read.

This was Oprah's pick and it'll be yours too. Debut novelist Clarke presents an affecting story of a young girl's death by drowning and the impact this has on those still living in a 1925 Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Ten-year-old Johnnie Mae Bynum feels the loss deeply as she was instructed to care for her younger sister. Guilt and confusion reign within her. Thus, we have a remarkable coming of age tale, we experience the family tensions that are the aftermath of such a tragedy, and witness racist feelings in a small community.

The author imbues the reading of her work with richness and understanding

This book wasn't exciting. Not at all. I had to read it for my school and would've abandoned it a while ago if I didn't have to read it. The ending kind of saved the book, since the last 50 pages were actually interesting and fun to read. That is no excuse however, for the first boring 200 pages.

I think the problem here is that Clarke tried to go for too many messages in one book. I'm not a great writer, but when I write, I tend to pick out one message to go through in my whole book. Clarke tried to go for too much and the result was 200 pages of nothingness. I must say, once in a while, when there is a plot twist, it gets interesting for a little while. But then it gets boring again.

Talk about Clara's death seems to go on forever. I think it ends at about 60 pages after she drowns which is awful. I understand it's a great sadness, but I don't need 60 pages to do it. The way Alice acts at the trainstation also seems out of line. She was just not expected to do it. It's another message that shouldn't be there. And finally, Johnie Mae's tresspass on the white pool seems out of line also. It's an attempt of Clarke to throw in the little segregation motive which should've been left out.

CONCLUSION: Don't read this unless you have to. You're not missing anything. There are far better books that this one out there.

If you want excitement and non-stop action, go read "Die Another Day". But if you enjoy great characters that seem so real they leap out of the page, try Breena Clarke's new novel, a great attempt at a new novel. It's slow, but gives us white folks an interesting glimpse into black culture during 1925 in a supposedly liberated city (Washington DC). The underlying tragedy of a little child's drowning pervades the book like ripples in a pool. Try it!

This was an okay book to read. The characters were average and not magnificent. This review reads like the book: struggling to get interesting.

As I cross another Oprah book Club book off my list, I am now realizing why I did not read this book so quickly. It was a beautifully written story, but it lacked at times something.

Johnnie Mae and her younger sister Clara are growing up Georgetown in the 1920's. At the time, the young girls cannot do many things. So they spend time hanging out at the river.

When tragedy strikes the family, they must pull together to be a family again. They rely on there strong family bonds and go from there. Johnnie Mae struggles with Clara's death. She hides herself to people and does not show her true emotion.

Until a young girl comes along that reminds Johnnie Mae of her sister Clara. She swears the young girl Pearl is the ghost of Clara who is there to watch over Johnnie Mae. As time goes on Johnnie Mae helps Pearl talk more and become more social.

The two girl's friendship was beautiful. How Johnnie Mae found such a good friend in the times after Clara's death. I also loved how they showed the mother and her struggles with losing a child and keeping herself calm and under control.

Overall, this was a good book, not one of my favorite books, but still something, I enjoyed reading.

This book was beatifully written. Breena Clark beatifully describes the lives of the Bynums, an African American family living in Georgetown during the 1920s. The main problem with this book is that it has no plot. The first quarter of the book is filled with striking events and interesting bits of characterization: Johnnie Mae Bynum's younger sister drowns in the Potomac, Johnnie Mae is experiencing growing pains as she approaches adolescence, the family is facing numerous trials and tribulations, and we meet several different potentially interesting characters. But where does all of this lead? No where, really. As these people keep going about their day-to-day business, the reader keeps waiting for a plot to surface, but it never does.

Another problem with this book is that the characters remain more or less undeveloped. We learn about their daily lives and we can imagine what they're feeling in certain situations, but the author never really gives us a direct look inside their hearts and minds.

Breena Clark is clearly a talented writer, but it seems she was too bogged down in expounding on the superficial aspects of her characters' lives to give them depth or to create an engaging storyline. On the bright side, this book did leave me with some fascinating images of Black life in 1920s Georgetown.

I usually avoid any book that was an Oprah pick but River Cross My Heart was really pretty good. This coming of age story will touch you. Johnnie Mae's baby sister was drowned in the Potomac. Johnnie Mae and her family live in segregated Georgetown. Racism is alive and dangerous. Johnnie is afraid that her parents blame her for Clara's death. Each of these situations is enough to make a book but Breena Clarke manages to blend the deep hardships facing her young heroine and brings it all to a satisfying conclusion. It will be interesting to see what kind of book Ms. Clarke writes next.

Kimberley Lindsay Wilson, author of Eleven Things Mama Should Have Told You About Men

Although it would probably seem an insult to say that this book is "Good, for a first novel," it is nonetheless appropriate. Clarke's omniscient narration is intriguing, but unbalanced. The reader is much absorbed by Johnnie Mae's growing pains and attachment to her dead sister, but the other characters are only pseudo-developed. There are interesting splashes of color with Ina and Ella Bromsen, but the reader is left unfulfilled with the "haint" of Pearl.

The novel is elegant in its portrayal of the hardships and struggles of African-Americans in Georgetown, balanced with characters who connect through plights other than just race.

The end of the novel was too abrupt, but this is symptomatic of many a first novel. This is an enjoyable read, well-balanced in smiles and tears. Along the lines of James Agee's classic "A Death in the Family."