Lady Moses : a novel /

Born of a black African writer and a white English actress, Jacinta Louise Buttercup Moses learns early on the ironclad boundaries of race when she is prevented from visiting her critically ill father in the hospital, "a high-windowed ward made of British ice and indifference." After her father's death, her mother is forced into grinding poverty, but that doesn't stop Jacinta from dreaming big. She finds comfort and a willing audience for her imaginative, hope-filled stories in Alfred, an older homosexual man who acts as a kind of guardian for her, and her adoring best friend, Alison Bean. And it is her capacity for seeing beyond the limits imposed on her by race and class that gives her the strength to deal with her mother's madness, her best friend's death, and the eventual birth of a daughter with a physical disability. This ambitious debut novel is expansive in scope as it moves from England to America to Africa and follows Jacinta's life from her childhood home to her mother's deathbed. Calling up deep, searching emotion and a series of recurring, ever more resonant images, Roy displays all her gifts as a poet (The Humming Birds, 1995) and more. Transcending race and gender, Roy finds in the particulars of Jacinta's life a powerful affirmation of our ability to not merely endure but prevail. --Joanne Wilkinson

"I could lie down in the hammock of his words," muses Jacinta Louise Buttercup Moses about her father's stories of Africa, and the same can be said of Roy's dazzling debut, an enchanting story about a woman whose life is fraught with disaster and blessed by love. Born to a haughty white British actress and an African writer, Jacinta enjoys an idyllic 1950s childhood in South London‘she barely notices her family's poverty‘until her father suddenly dies, and her life becomes frightening and dangerous. By the time she reaches adolescence, Jacinta has been sexually abused by a neighbor, has witnessed her friend's death in a terrible accident and has been sent to a foster home while her mother recovers from a breakdown. But witty, defiant Jacinta survives and, in the process, wins our sympathy. At 24, she is whisked to Virginia by theatrical American novelist Emmanuel Fox III, who proposes on bended knee an hour after they meet. Troubled from the start, their relationship is plagued by the birth of a handicapped daughter and by Manny's jealousy when Jacinta succeeds as a poet, but a pilgrimage to West Africa enables Jacinta to reclaim her father's spirit and to recognize her own fortitude. Roy handles her complex plot with impressive authority as she tackles themes of racial identity, mental illness and female self-reliance. Her characters are rendered with depth; headstrong, selfish, wise and tender, they make mistakes, have regrets and learn from them. And Roy's deft prose gracefully expresses their humor, their pain and their moments of joy and transcendence. Author tour. (Feb.) FYI: Lady Moses is the first debut novel to be published by Harper's new imprint, Harper Flamingo. Roy won the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize for her 1995 collection of poems, The Humming Birds. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A flattering prepublication blurb by Nikki Giovanni is a nice coup for a first novel. It's even better that the writing lives up to the praise. Roy (English, Virginia Tech.) has created a powerful character in Jacinta Louise Buttercup Moses. Called to share her mother's last days, Jacinta responds to her loss by narrating her story. The daughter of a biracial couple, she endures genteel and not-so-genteel poverty, the early death of her African father, her white mother's mental instability, and the disasters engendered by her own pride and drive for beauty. Her childhood is shaped by the physical poverty of South London and a loving, if wonderfully idiosyncratic, extended family. Fleeing London for the promise of America, Jacinta finds both freedom in writing and imprisonment in an unhappy marriage. Impulsively traveling again, this time to Africa, she encounters more questions before finding her own center. Unflinchingly honest, Jacinta is by turns fascinating and infuriating but always fully human. Recommended for all fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/97.]‘Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., N.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

An overwritten and underpowered debut about a young woman of mixed race who predictably finds strength, wisdom, and compassion after surviving ordeals, major and minor, on three continents. Poet Roy vividly evokes the novel's varied settings, but its storyline is concept-driven (a young woman facing down adversity), with insights more banal than profound: ""There is much to be happy about in this world if we look for it,"" says the lover of Jacinta Moses, the narrator, who in turn tells those attending her mother's funeral that ""love can not happen in a small room. . . the beloved together are the meaning of life."" Jacinta begins her tale as her mother is dying, then moves back and forth in time, recalling her English childhood, her marriage to an American, and her life-changing visit to Africa. Jacinta's father, Simon Moses, was an African writer who came to England, where he met and married her white mother, Louise; the two were so happy that when he died the grieving Louise went insane and Jacinta was cared for by a foster mother. A bright child, who wrote poetry, she somehow survived, but she missed her father and his stories of Africa, and she resented her mother's illness and self-absorption. Determined to improve her life, Jacinta eventually went to college, where she met the self-absorbed Manny, whom she married and accompanied back to Virginia. There, initially happy, she gave birth to Lady, but the marriage was soon in trouble. A family visit to Africa, while liberating Jacinta (who falls in love with John Turay, an African), is marred by a fatal accident and unpleasant reminders of the past. At the close, with her mother now buried and the past faced down, Jacinta can go home to Africa without guilt or fear. Schematic takes on prejudice, Africa, and feminism acted out by unconvincing characters. A disappointing debut. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.