Blue

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As this masterful new novel by Ohio ( End of the Empire ) opens, Ricki Jones is at the site of the plane crash that killed her twin sister, Israellen. The book then retreats into an intricate series of flashbacks that reveal the complicated relationships of the main characters from 1945 to the 1980s. Isra,a ballet dancer, is living out theirmother Liberty's aspirations--she had dreamed of dancing at Carnegie Hall. Ricki is a successful blues guitarist. Among the rich cast of characters are Siobhan, an African American woman who explains that her unusual name is ``black Irish'' and a cat named Tina Turner. Music and racism are the threads that bind these black women together, providing a double meaning to the book's title. Song lyrics by Bessie Smith, Little Richard and others comment on the emotions and actions of the characters. Hope for a better life forms the backdrop for this human drama, but the dream is in the end deferred once more as racism is found more persistent than hope. The story of these strong and determined women becomes a meditation on loss--loss of life and love, of innocence, of a dream. Only as these characters cling to one another can they overcome the Blues. (Sept.)

Library Journal

The stories and memories of three generations of unconventional black women converge in this contemporary novel. Rickshaw Jones and her twin sister, Israellen, are raised in Minneapolis by their mother, Liberty Jones. Rickshaw is a gay musician, and Israellen works as a dancer and actress. Liberty's best friend, Emma Nevada, is an activist in the Civil Rights movement who influences them all. The novel begins with Israellen's death in a plane crash and then ranges freely back and forth from the 1960s through the present, depicting vignettes from the characters' lives. Perhaps Ohio's ( The Finer Grain , Naiad Pr., 1988) intention was to create a novel reminiscent of an improvisational piece of music, with riffs on a theme. However, the disjointedness of the vignettes and the lack of any chronology make it impossible to become involved in what could have been a compelling exploration.-- Janet Boyarin Blundell, MLS, Brookdale Community Coll., Lincroft, N.J.

Marie Kuda

From the moment Ricki Jones' sister is zipped up in a body bag on page one, Ohio grabs you. She never lets go throughout a novel that is a veritable blues in prose. As the novel progresses, each of the principal female characters picks up the theme and, playing the instruments of memory and dreams, repeats it from her variant perspective, moving the novel forward to the rhythm of her own life. Those women are Ricki, a struggling young singer finding that love and the blues are mutually exclusive; her twin Israellen, a dancer trying to make it as an actress; their mother Liberty Grace, a dancer-become-teacher who fiercely loves her interracial family; and Emma Nevada, Liberty's childhood friend whose life is bound to music and black politics, beginning with Marcus Garvey, continuing through the Panthers, and ending with a bullet. Their lovers (male and female), mentors, and friends are deftly drawn, and each contributes a characteristic riff to this haunting and melancholy literary song whose strains linger long after the last page.