| View Larger Image | Sugar: A Novel | Paperbackby Bernice L. McFadden (Author)
| List Price: | $14.00 | | Price: | $10.08 | | You Save: | $3.92 (28%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Plume | | Page Count: | 240 Pages | | Publication Date: | January 02, 2001 | | Sales Rank: | 53,234rd |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780452282209
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
From an exciting new voice in African-American contemporary fiction comes "a literary explosion...a stunning tale of love and loss" (The Chicago Defender). The novel opens when a young prostitute comes to Bigelow, Arkansas, to start over, far from her haunting past. Sugar moves next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for the daughter who was murdered fifteen years before. Over sweet-potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming both women's lives-and the life of an entire town.Sugar brings a Southern African-American town vividly to life, with its flowering magnolia trees, lingering scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, and white picket fences that keep strangers out-but ignorance and superstition in. To read this novel is to take a journey through loss and suffering to a place of forgiveness, understanding, and grace. |
Amazon.com Review
Bernice L. McFadden's first novel begins with the brief, poetic description of a crime so startling that the reader is helplessly drawn in, as if a bright red door stood ajar on a bleak and forbidding house. Pearl Taylor's daughter, Jude, has been found murdered and mutilated near a field at the edge of town. "The murder had white man written all over it," writes McFadden. "But no one would say it above a whisper. It was 1940. It was Bigelow, Arkansas. It was a black child. Need any more be said?" In the years that follow, Pearl catches sight of Jude in so many strangers that when Sugar Lacey comes to town and sets up her unwholesome "business" in the house next door, she doesn't know whether to believe what she sees in Sugar's face: a striking similarity to Jude, dead 15 years. In her sedate but supple prose--rising at times to a light, unforced lyricism in the description of landscape or character--the author perfectly renders the closed and protective society of a small Southern town, the superstitions, gossip, and prying. Although the men of Bigelow are happy enough to have Sugar around, the women do their best to drive her off. Only Pearl is drawn to Sugar, managing to look beyond the rumors surrounding her new neighbor, whose dismal life, she tells Pearl, "had no crossroads." Eventually Pearl shows Sugar the ballerina-topped jewelry box in which she keeps snapshots of her dead daughter. Sugar lifted the lid and saw herself staring back at her. She jerked as if struck. Her hands were shaking as she lifted the first of many pictures from the box. Jude rolling in the grass, Jude swimming in the lake, Jude sleeping, Jude laughing. Sugar's head was swimming. If someone had brought these pictures to her and said, 'Here you are in the life you can't recall,' she would have believed every word of it and ignored the slight differences that remained between Jude and herself. Jude's smaller nose and thinner lips, her rounder eyes and fuller brow. But the smile was the same; sure and solid. Sugar knew that smile, it was her own. Slowly, the secret connections between Jude and Sugar unfold against a backdrop of suspense and the return of violence. This is an ambitious and feeling debut from a promising writer. --Regina Marler |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 142 reviews)
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Sugar by Bernice McFaddem by R. Ponder (Northern California)  5 Stars
November 21, 2009
This is a wonderful novel for anyone who loves unpredictable human stories. Bernice's language to describe places and events put me right there where it was happening and made me forget that I didn't personally know the characters. I would highly recommend this book and hope that she continues to captivate the literary world with her talent.
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REAL by Tara Carter Brooks (Shreveport, La.) 5 Stars
November 19, 2009
The very first page captures you in disbelief, so much that you read it over to make sure you read correctly. You can see the sunset, smell the rain, feel the pain! This book embodied every emotion imaginable. It's a MUST read!!! The sequel is just as equal with an unbelievable twisted ending.
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Enthralling Classic! by Janet "Jaize" Brown (DC) 5 Stars
November 15, 2009
SUGAR is a novel that will affect your life. Years ago a book store owner told me about it, but I was hesitant. However, I took his advise and will be forever grateful. Sugar is celebrating it's 10th year annivesary and if you have yet to read it, please do yourself a literary favor. If you know somebody who hasn't read it, treat them to a copy: the holidays are approaching! I remember rarely having my head out of this book as I read it within a few days. While at work, I could not wait for breaks and lunches so I could "get back to my girl Sugar". Sugar is a character that permeates your spirit because she is so real and her suffering just makes her stronger. She is a fiesty character that can take her place along side fictional super heros. Sugar is forced to become an adult when she is still a child. While reading the novel, there were periods where I had to actually brace myself as Sugar endured, as though she was real and I could talk to her.
Just as the bookstore owner did for me, I am for once refraining to point out some of the storylines to you. I'll say it was about real life troubles for many women! Men enjoy the read as well.
A friend of mine actually read the book at the same time that I was reading it and she said that it was "life-changing" for her. Other friends who rarely had time to read, easily enjoyed this book and thanked me for recommending it.
Buy a copy!
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Great book!!!!! by Jacqueline McIntyre (USA) 5 Stars
November 14, 2009
This book is very good. I would read it again and again. The author has all great books.
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Sugar A time to remember by syndi7 (ohio) 5 Stars
November 14, 2009
Once you begin to read you are so sucked in by what happens to Jude you have to finish, because you not only want to know what happens, how they get up and move on, but you also want to see how it ends! Reading Sugar was more than sweet, it was like Tony the Tiger, it was GREEEEAT!
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