Saturday, January 8, 2011

The Air Between Us

Titles: The Air Between Us
Author: Deborah Johnson
My take: A good read. An uncomfortable read, but a good read. Sometimes tries a little too hard
Spoiler-free synopsis: The book follows a group of people in a decent-sized town in Mississippi on the cusp of integration. It a story of personal relations, racial relations, and the way prejudice of all kinds can weave its way into a person’s life



We start out with a young black boy driving a pickup truck to the “colored-only” emergency room entrance at the local hospital, and we get a good idea of the setting and tone right off the bat. In the back of the truck is a white man, who the boy says shot himself. The child, only knowing he needed to get the man to the hospital, went to the entrance he would use – only to be told he has to go around to the other side. The workers in the black entrance aren’t allowed to treat white patients. So he goes around to the other side, but when he tries to get help for the man, is ignored or insulted until they realize that he’s telling the truth and the patient is white. At first it seems like the man -a poor man living on the edge of town – will recover, but shortly it comes out that he’s died.

From there, we delve into the many secrets of the town. There’s two main doctors, one white and one black, with an old connection. A woman of mixed ancestry who refers to herself as a “chameleon” because when she was working as a prostitute, she could pass for either very light black-skinned or very dark white-skinned, depending on the client, but who now does fortune telling. A white man who rails against integration but sees no hypocrisy in singing with the choir at the black church. The black doctor’s wife is also concealing something sad and old in her attempts to nurture her family.

The story delves in and out of their varied stories as it follows loosely along the trail of the main mystery – what happened to that man brought into the hospital, who died. Adding to all the problems is that integration is becoming law, and the town needs a new school, but people are afraid of building the two schools together.

The characters in this book are interesting, often interacting in very understated ways. The unfortunate part is when the narrative takes those subtle interactions and subtle clues and decides to beat you over the head with them. Luckily, it happens infrequently.

After a few slow parts, the book really picks up toward the end as all the secrets and plot threads tie up together sensibly, if not entirely nearly. It’s a good ending though I think, a strong one.

My favorite character was Madame Melba, the fortune teller. Of all the characters, she seemed the most aware of herself and what she wanted, and least likely to let the things going on get to her too devastatingly. As a result the parts told from her point of view tend to allow a reader the most unbiased view, which is nice.

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