Red at the Bone: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020

by Jacqueline Woodson

THE TIMES '100 BEST SUMMER READS'

NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2020


'Sublime' Candice Carty-Williams
'An epic in miniature' Tayari Jones
'A banger' Ta-Nehisi Coates
'Generous and big-hearted' Brit Bennett
'A true spell of a book' Ocean Vuong
'A proclamation' R.O. Kwon
'A little masterpiece' Paula Hawkins
'I adored this book' Elizabeth MacNeal
'Pure poetry' Observer
'A sharply focused gem' Sunday Times
'Will remind you why you love reading' Stylist
'Haunting' Guardian
'A wonderful, tragic, inspiring story' Metro
'Prose that sings off the page... Gorgeous' Mail on Sunday
'A nuanced portrait of shifting family relationships' Financial Times
'As seductive as a Prince bop' O, The Oprah Magazine
'Razor-sharp' Vanity Fair
'Dazzling... With urgent, vital insights into questions of class, gender, race, history, queerness and sex' New York Times

An unexpected teenage pregnancy brings together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments and longings that can bind or divide us.
From the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming.

Brooklyn, 2001. It is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress - the very same dress that was sewn for a different wearer, Melody's mother, for a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody's family - from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to post 9/11 New York - Red at the Bone explores sexual desire, identity, class, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, as it looks at the ways in which young people must so often make fateful decisions about their lives before they have even begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.


*** ONE OF THE BOOKS OF THE YEAR FOR: New York Times; Washington Post; Time; USA Today; O, The Oprah Magazine; Elle; Good Housekeeping; Esquire; NPR; New York Public Library; Library Journal; Kirkus; BookRiot; She Reads; The Undefeated ***

• ISBN10: 1474616437
• ISBN13: 9781474616430
• Publish Date: 23 January 2020 (first published 17 September 2019)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 January 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Imprint: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 208
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

Guess that’s where the tears came from, knowing that there’s so much in this great big world that you don’t have a single ounce of control over. Guess the sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll have one less heartbreak in your life.

(3.5) Explored themes like class differences, teenage pregnancy, and parenthood. I think it‘s a pretty okay book, I just couldn’t really connect with the characters, this being a short book and with multiple POVs at that. The timelines were quite confusing as well.‬

[jamiereadthis]

Fraught and lyrical. I was thinking I didn’t need the surprise 9/11— again, but then she mirrored it with the Tulsa massacre, and whoa. I’m into the theme of history repeating but also, as with Melody, the choice of taking different paths.

[elvinagb]

I wish I could give it more stars. Absolutely brilliant writing.