I’ve taken far too long to review this amazing novel, wanting to do it justice. the Turner house, a small residence on Yarrow Street in Detroit, was home to Francis and Viola and the thirteen children born to them. Francis and Viola grew up in the same Arkansas town and he did right by her when she got pregnant with their son Charles (Cha-Cha). When this led to his loss of position with the church run by a pastor who had taken him in, Francis joined the great migration of African Americans to the industrial North East. He sowed some wild oats and took a while to secure a decent job in the auto industry. Eventually, Viola joined him and they settled down. That was many years and many children ago. It is 2008. Francis is dead. Viola has moved in with Cha-Cha due to a need to recover from a stroke. The house sits empty and the now adult children need to figure out what to do with a place that is financially upside down due to the improper refinancing issues of the housing bubble. There are very different view points and Cha-Cha, used to being the new head of the family, is forced to figure out how to navigate the strong personalities in his family.
Cha-Cha struggles with the memory of being literally spooked by a ghost in his early teens, a spector that continues to play a huge role in his life after a car accident as an older adult. The various siblings and their various children, some with serious problems and most doing okay in life are written so beautifully that throughout the novel I felt like a kid reading an amazing book I could not put down. I was there. I was at the family meetings, in Francis’s first boarding house in Detroit where he got the bed during the day only, with Lelah at the casino and in the house when it was full of life and when it was empty. This is the story of the family. The house is a character, as is their East Detroit neighborhood. Not one second of this novel is boring. It primarily covers several weeks in 2008 with many flashbacks to Arkansas, the Yarrow Street House, the Neighborhood in East Detroit, also a character of sorts. I read the audio book and the narration was one of the best performances I have ever, ever listened to. Congratulations to the narrator Adenrele Ojo. This is a book originally published in 2015 to great popular and critical acclaim. The audio version is new. I HIGHLY recommend The Turner House!
They Called me Bookworm 