Christine Muhlke
Bebe Moore Campbell, the author of Brothers and Sisters and Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, has done an extraordinary thing with her new novel, Singing in the Comeback Choir -- she's crafted a smooth, deeply witty novel that will appeal to fans of both Terry McMillan and Dorothy Allison. Her eye for detail and ear for colloquial black language -- from No'th Ca'lina to South Central -- brings her fiction alive. Best of all, beneath Campbell's easygoing style lies an intelligent, heartfelt story that packs a surprising emotional punch.
Campbell's protagonist, Maxine McCoy, has made it from the streets of Philadelphia, where she was raised by her flamboyant jazz-singer grandmother, Lindy, to the flowering hills of Hollywood, where she produces a talk show that tries (and sometimes fails) not to be sleazy. Ignoring the twinges of a spiritual conflict that stems from wanting to help less-fortunate blacks -- like the hopeless ghetto teens she taught while trying to break into television -- and wanting to make it in the soulless world of television, Maxine knows she'd "come too far and fought too hard to take [her] title for granted." She and her handsome, successful, dishwashing(!) husband are trying to heal the wounds of a miscarriage and infidelity when Maxine is told she has to pull the show out of a ratings slump or look for another job and find a new caretaker for 76-year-old Lindy, who is consoling herself after a stroke with scotch, Kools and heavy doses of Carmen McRae. Putting her job on the line, Maxine returns to her childhood home, where she tries to get Lindy to straighten up and fly right and leave her now-dangerous neighborhood. In the graffiti-covered house, Maxine's "Harriet-Tubman-Mary-McLeod-Bethune-Lift- Every-Voice-And-We-Shall-Overcome complex" kicks in, and soon she's trying to bring both the neighborhood and her once-fiery grandmother back to life.
Music plays an important part in this book's language and metaphors, as well as its plot. Campbell's gift for rhythm and melody keep the pages flying, with sentences like, "Lindy's voice was a skater, dipping, leaping, twirling, cool as the ice it floated across. Cool. Cool. Cool." Divas like Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday are invoked to set Lindy's mood. Characters and settings are vividly constructed, all representative of the different worlds Maxine has fought to exist in and moves so easily between. Especially funny (and scary) are her glimpses into the world of talk shows.
The unfortunate question asked of most books written by popular female African-American writers is, "Is it literature?" In Campbell's case, the answer is, "Not exactly, but who the hell cares?" I devoured this book in an evening and went to bed wet with tears. Singing in the Comeback Choir speaks to readers of all races, and it carries Campbell's signal message: With love, laughter, hope and hard work, women can turn shit around. -- Salon
Wendy Sealey
In her latest novel, [Campbell] masterfully spins a careful plot from which emerges a well-crafted and engaging work that grapples with life's most important issues: love, trust, and the value of faith. -- Quarterly Black Review
Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly
A sheen of emotional slickness prevents Campbell's disappointing third novel from achieving the resonance of her earlier work (Brothers and Sisters; Your Blues Ain't Like Mine). Two women struggle to overcome betrayal. Professionally successful and newly pregnant, Maxine McCoy, an African American TV producer, tries to regain marital trust after her husband's brief infidelity. During a sweeps period that will determine her talk show's future, Maxine leaves L.A. and returns to North Philadelphia to attend to Malindy Walker, the grandmother who raised her. Once a moderately famous club singer, Lindy is depressed and rebellious after a recent mild stroke; she also continues to nurse deep resentment for the manager who swindled her. An invitation to sing at an important music festival seems just the stimulus Lindy needs, yet she refuses either to participate or to move out of her declining neighborhood despite Maxine's repeated urging to do both. Just as a small accidental house fire shakes Lindy from her emotional paralysis, Maxine must leave Lindy on her own when she returns to her job. Amid professional havoc and personal doubts, a chance encounter with a former student helps Maxine discover inner peace, which she uses to help herself and Lindy leave the past behind and move happily forward. Campbell does a nice job of drawing the intriguing complexities of Maxine and Lindy's relationship, but the subtlety that distinguishes the best passages is markedly absent from most of the book, which is undermined by broad characterizations and an implausibly neat conclusion.
Library Journal
At 37, African American Maxine McCoy's plate is full. She's newly pregnant and fearful of another miscarriage, trying to rebuild trust in her unfaithful but regretful husband and worried about the grandmother who raised her and still lives in a failing north Philadelphia neighborhood after suffering a small stroke. As executive producer of a television talk show, Maxine has nurtured the host and raised ratings, but cancellation looms and the pending sweeps are critical. Then her grandmother's paid companion leaves, and Maxine goes to her beloved grandma, once a renowned singer who's lost both her zest for living and her singing voice. Struggling to meet all her commitments, Maxine is torn between her mentor's admonition to follow the money and her growing desire to follow her heart. In her third novel, Campbell (Brothers and Sisters, LJ 8/94) dwells less on racial issues than on human problems, particularly those faced by modern women working outside the home. Campbell tells a fine feel-good story, and her audience is bound to embrace it. [BOMC Main selection; Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/97.]Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
School Library Journal
YA-Maxine McCoy is a successful television producer in L.A., but half of her heart is back on Sutherland Street in a decaying section of Philadelphia. There, her grandmother Lindy, a former blues singer, has recovered from a small stroke but, against doctor's orders, is drinking and smoking far too much. Maxine's TV show is slipping in the ratings, but she finds time for a trip to Philly to check on Lindy, who raised her, and needs help, even if she won't admit it. Maxine needs help too; her husband has had a brief affair that destroyed her trust in him. She is pregnant and, after one miscarriage, is afraid for her good fortune. Lindy is depressed and bored, and when she is invited to sing in a music festival, she is both elated and fearful. A trio of unforgettable musicians help her get ready for her last performance. This is Maxine's story, the story of a black woman who has made it big but hasn't forgotten her roots, or let success overshadow her loving, caring nature. It is also Lindy's story; she yearns for one more chance, but finally realizes she needs help, and accepts it. The minor characters are also drawn with compassion and humor. YAs will find dynamic role models in these strong, black women and the men who love them.-Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Betsy Groban
In her latest novel, Bebe Moore Campbell is back on the turf she explored so well in her previous one, Brothers and Sisters: the world of upwardly mobile blacks successfully making their way in corporate America yet experiencing a sharp sense of dislocation from their roots. -- New York Times Book Review
Kirkus Reviews
Campbell (Brothers and Sisters, 1994, etc.) continues her thoughtful exploration of contemporary black life, this time featuring a female TV producer torn between her upwardly mobile L.A. existence and the crumbling Philadelphia neighborhood where she grew up. Maxine McCoy, married, pregnant, and the executive producer of the high-profile Ted Graham Show, has to juggle her talk show responsibilities with caretaking, at long-distance, her aging grandmother, the once well-known singer Lindy Walker. When Maxine gets word that Pearl, the friend who's been watching over Lindy since the old woman's mild stroke, is going back south, Maxine has to take off during sweeps week, risking the displeasure of her colleagues, to tend to her grandmother in Philadelphia. Her first impulse is to move Lindy into an assisted-living center. But Lindy will have nothing to do with it. When Maxine's own mother, Millicent, died, Lindy took Maxine in, eventually giving up her singing career for the financial security of practical nursing. Lindy vowed to do for her granddaughter what she was unable or unwilling to do for her own daughter Millicent. Now, after spending time in her old neighborhood, Maxine realizes that, while drugs and crime have infiltrated Lindy's block, the sense of community has remained intact. And as she struggles to put the elements of her own life into perspectiveher feelings about work, about her unpredictable husband, and about prospective motherhoodshe discovers the redeeming quality of community involvement and the healing that comes from a sense of purpose. Lindy's own salvation ultimately comes from getting back in touch with her music, whence the novel's title. Rich and fluidstorytelling, peopled with believably illuminating characters.
