What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day
Pearl Cleage

To be perfectly honest, I bought this book for its cover, which is graced by a chic silhouette of a purple tai chi woman. The typefaces are clean and the cover's understated design intrigued me. Certainly an editor who had chosen such a designer would also have chosen a book to match.

I shouldn't have ignored the "Oprah's Book Club" logo in the top right corner.

Nothing against Oprah (well, nothing that has a part in this discussoin); I buy books for myself, and for my students to practice their English. Oprah tends to recommend books that are a bit more syrupy than I like. Other Oprah book club books I've read have also been big on realistic cultural lingo, which confuses English as a Foreign Language students faster than a page from the book of Job. So I usually avoid the books Oprah has sent her clubbers off to read.

This time, lured by the oh so intriguing cover, I bought the book anyway. It's the story of a 30s-something African-American woman who ran away from her tiny Michigan town to find a life. Now she's back for a short visit between big exciting cities, facing a life with HIV and disillusioned with the prospect of Mecca.

Visiting her sister, she finds that their hometown has changed for the worse, filled with cocaine addicts, abusive boyfriends, single teenage mothers, and ignorance. But her older sister, a widowed social worker, is trying to give the kids enough life training to be able to make something of themselves. The neighbor, a dreadlocked Vietnam vet who practices Tai Chi between carpentry jobs, is helping, too. And as main character Ava starts to help out, she accidentally begins to like the place.

The themes of grassroots-driven social change, small-town community, and looking out for each other are strong, but they work out too quickly for this story to read as anything but a fairy tale. Crack babies are quiet, teenage girls immediately adopt safe sex, the abusive boyfriend is stupid enough to land himself safely out of the way in jail, the cocaine addicts are shuffled off to rehab, and the interfering pastor and his wife are banished to Chicago. It's a story that should be gritty, but somehow we manage to keep our hands clean all the way through.

A little too quickly told, too neatly packaged, but I did like the themes and the characters are quirky and entertaining (if a tad flat). I didn't hate it, but I probably won't be reading this one again. Maybe I'll just prop it up so I can look at the cover.