Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Four friends, all graduates of Hampton Institute, keep a collective journal they call "If This World Were Mine," and share their personal diaries each month at a gathering filled with humor, gossip, and affirmation. The four group members are as different as the seasons, yet they all share a love of one another. Yolanda, a media consultant, keeps it going on with a no-nonsense attitude and independence that are balanced by the theatrics of Riley, a former marketing executive whose marriage has reduced her to a "kept woman with kids." Computer engineer Dwight's anger at the world is offset by the compassion of Leland, a gay psychiatrist whose clients make him question why God ever invented sex.
But after five years, the once-strong bonds of friendship are weakening, and the group must handle challenges of work, lost love, and a stranger in their midst. As the group members confront their true feelings toward each other, resentments and long-held secrets surface, and the stability of the group begins to disintegrate. Is their past friendship strong enough to survive the future?
Synopsis
Four friends, all graduates of Hampton Institute, keep a collective journal they call "If This World Were Mine," and share their personal diaries each month at a gathering filled with humor, gossip, and affirmation. The four group members are as different as the seasons, yet they all share a love of one another. Yolanda, a media consultant, keeps it going on with a no-nonsense attitude and independence that are balanced by the theatrics of Riley, a former marketing executive whose marriage has reduced her to a "kept woman with kids." Computer engineer Dwight's anger at the world is offset by the compassion of Leland, a gay psychiatrist whose clients make him question why God ever invented sex.
But after five years, the once-strong bonds of friendship are weakening, and the group must handle challenges of work, lost love, and a stranger in their midst. As the group members confront their true feelings toward each other, resentments and long-held secrets surface, and the stability of the group begins to disintegrate. Is their past friendship strong enough to survive the future?
Publishers Weekly
Harris, author of the bestseller And This Too Shall Pass, tells another involving tale of contemporary black lives. Members of a monthly journal-writing group, four African American friends from college days who all live in the Chicago area, help each other through the dramas of their respective lives. They're all approaching 40 and looking for answers: Riley Woodson, a self-proclaimed Black Princess immured in a stultifying marriage; Yolanda Williams, a media consultant; gay psychiatrist Leland Thompson; and Dwight Scott, a computer engineer simmering with hatred for white people. Best friends Leland and Yolanda each want to share life with a responsive mate; Dwight longs to extricate himself from his anger by working in a black-owned business; and Riley dreams of finding fulfillment as a poet and singer. But betrayals in love and business, as well as other conflicts and resentments, threaten to wrench them apart. As the characters work through their individual knots of personal dilemmas, they rediscover the bonds that initially drew them together. A supple raconteur, Harris explores the intimacies of friendship with a sensitive eye. Yet it's likely that many readers will long for more structure and dramatic payoff than this complex yet amorphous and sometimes sentimental buddy tale provides. Author tour. (Aug.)
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewE. Lynn Harris has already made publishing history. No black male novelist has ever before sold as many copies of his book as quickly as Harris has. With a nine-week stay on The New York Times bestseller list last year and appearances on bestseller lists across the nation, his third novel, And This Too Shall Pass, put Harris on the top of everyone's must-read list.
Now, with more than a half-million copies of his three novels in print, comes If This World Were Mine. This fourth work is a deft exploration of the ever-changing landscape of friendship among human beings, and in Harris's inimitable style, it reveals the story of a friendship that can — and must — survive the test of time and conflict in order to flourish.
Yolanda, Leland, Riley, and Dwight share a deep friendship forged in earlier years at Hampton University. In monthly reunions set in their hometown of Chicago, the friends enjoy evenings of gossip, companionship, and laughter and often discuss private entries in their personal diaries as well as what they have written in their collective journal, which they call "If This World Were Mine."
But after five years, the bonds of friendship are weakening, and the group must confront the challenges of work, lost love, and the affecting presence of a sexy stranger: gray-eyed John Basil Henderson, a character eerily haunted by his past. As the group members confront their true feelings toward each other, resentments and long-held secrets surface, and the stability of the group begins to falter. The disintegration of thesecomplexfriendships is halted by the specter of death, which forces the friends to recognize and accept the inner strength that they, as a group, have nurtured in each other.
In this as in all of his novels, Harris never ceases to remind us that life, like love, is about self-acceptance. In this vivid portrait of contemporary black life, with all its pressures and the complications of bisexuality, AIDS, and racism, Harris confirms a faith in the power of love — love of all kinds — to thrill and to heal, which will warm the hearts of readers everywhere.
Publishers Weekly -
Harris, author of the bestseller And This Too Shall Pass, tells another involving tale of contemporary black lives. Members of a monthly journal-writing group, four African American friends from college days who all live in the Chicago area, help each other through the dramas of their respective lives. They're all approaching 40 and looking for answers: Riley Woodson, a self-proclaimed Black Princess immured in a stultifying marriage; Yolanda Williams, a media consultant; gay psychiatrist Leland Thompson; and Dwight Scott, a computer engineer simmering with hatred for white people. Best friends Leland and Yolanda each want to share life with a responsive mate; Dwight longs to extricate himself from his anger by working in a black-owned business; and Riley dreams of finding fulfillment as a poet and singer. But betrayals in love and business, as well as other conflicts and resentments, threaten to wrench them apart. As the characters work through their individual knots of personal dilemmas, they rediscover the bonds that initially drew them together. A supple raconteur, Harris explores the intimacies of friendship with a sensitive eye. Yet it's likely that many readers will long for more structure and dramatic payoff than this complex yet amorphous and sometimes sentimental buddy tale provides. Author tour. (Aug.)Library Journal
The author of hits like Just As I Am (LJ 2/1/94), named Book of the Year in 1996 by the Blackboard African-American Booksellers, envisions a reunion of four Howard University friends.Kirkus Reviews
A journal-writing group helps four black college friends see each other through major and minor crises, in Harris's fourth outing (And This Too Shall Pass, 1996, etc.)Yolanda, Riley, Dwight, and Leland, all alumni of the Hampton Institute, gather regularly to read their journal entries and ask each other questions like "What are you grateful for?" Yolanda, a consultant who's extricated herself from a so-so marriage, has a take-charge attitude toward the many men who pursue her. Self-deluding Riley has an incredibly overbearing mother, a husband who's always away on business, and aspirations to be a poet and singer; her friends are gently discouraging, so she turns to the Internet for support. Dwight, a computer engineer, finds that his colleagues' racism and his exaggerated hostility toward whites cause problems at work. Leland, a gay therapist and Yolanda's best friend, is the gentle heart of the group; his chicken-wingmagnate uncle, also gay, dispenses homespun wisdom in abundance. Over the course of the story, the characters undergo cataclysms of varying intensity. Riley strikes up an E-mail relationship with a stranger who signs himself "Lonelyboy"; he turns out, all too unsurprisingly, to be her own estranged husband. Dwight quits his job and contemplates going to work for a black-owned computer company in Washington. Yolanda, meanwhile, meets John Basil Henderson, an ex-football player with a high-intensity courtship style (limos, massages, surprise trips to New Orleans). But John is concealing a past that includes bisexuality and an episode of blackmail; Leland, who's learned from a client that John isn't all he seems to be, must wrestle with the ethical question of whether to tell Yolanda what he knows.
What starts off as an amiable enough soap opera quickly becomes mired in byzantine subplots and friends-stick-by-each-other clichés.