FICTION: BIRACIAL ROMANCE
Sweet Jiminy by Kristin Gore
I came to “Sweet Jiminy” as a fan of Kristin Gore. The daughter of the former vice president has long been out of her father’s shadow. She’s written for “Saturday Night Live” and the hysterical animated TV series “Futurama,” and she’s the best-selling author of two light novels. She breaks new ground in “Sweet Jiminy,” which is serious in tone and theme, and I root for any writer who tries to grow, especially one this skilled. So I’ll attribute the faltering steps here to the challenge she’s taken on.
Gore has an eye for a good story, and there is one in “Sweet Jiminy.” Jiminy Davis, a 25-year-old, drops out of law school and goes home to rural Mississippi to visit her grandmother, Willa. Jiminy begins to ask questions about a double murder that took place there in 1966, a hate crime in which the husband and daughter of Willa’s longtime housekeeper were killed. The murders were never solved, not even investigated, just brushed aside in the bigotry of the times. The racially charged aspect of the novel is underscored by a nicely rendered romance between Jiminy, who is white, and Bo Waters, an African-American medical student, in a relationship that raises eyebrows in the tiny town of Fayeville.
This is the stuff of great novels, and the story should resonate with the agony and anger of racial injustice, echoing both “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Help.” “Sweet Jiminy” should roil with emotion, but this is where it falls short, and I think I know why.
Gore is also a screenwriter, and the novel reads like a screen treatment, with stretches of excellent dialogue but not enough exposition in between. The book is only 230 pages, probably 100 too short, and the reader isn’t told in any detail what Jiminy, Bo or Willa looks like, nor are any of the settings described, not Willa’s farm or even Fayeville.
Jiminy herself isn’t an easy character to appreciate. She describes herself as “stunted and hesitant,” and unfortunately that shows in her halting investigation of the old double murder. When she finally begins to question someone about the crimes, she ends the interview prematurely because he lights a cigarette: “She had more questions, but she suddenly felt claustrophobic in this hot, smoky, germy place.”
I look forward to Gore’s next novel, and I hope she gives herself the chance to expand, enrich and tell her story, at novel length, with all the emotional depth and complexity it deserves. She has the time, and more important, she has the talent.
FICTION: COMING-OF-AGE TALE
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Shilpi Somaya Gowda strikes a pleasing balance in her first novel, which draws upon the hot-button issues of female infanticide and overseas adoption. “Secret Daughter” tells a nuanced coming-of-age story that is faithful to the economic and emotional realities of two very different cultures.
Kavita and Jasu are peasants in rural India. When Kavita gives birth to a second daughter in 1984, she knows her husband will take the infant to be killed if she does not act quickly. They cannot afford to raise a girl, he reminds her; they need a son to help in the fields. To save the infant’s life, Kavita leaves her at an orphanage in Bombay.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a physician named Somer has just learned that she will never be able to have a baby. Her husband, Kris, persuades her to adopt a child from Bombay, his hometown. But once the couple arrives in India, Somer feels awkward with Kris’ family and out of place. She’s eager to go home with their beautiful new daughter, Asha.
Gowda, whose parents emigrated from India to Canada, alternates between these two couples as she sketches events over the next 20 years. Kavita and Jasu finally have a son, Vijay, and move to Bombay to give him a better life. Somer and Kris find themselves growing apart as she shifts her medical career into low gear to care for Asha. Kris, a high-powered surgeon, misses Somer’s intellectual companionship and resents her reluctance to visit India. Teenage Asha, painfully curious about her biological mother, also becomes frustrated by Somer’s lack of interest in her Indian heritage.
Gowda doesn’t neaten up the messy complications of family life as she warmly affirms the power of love to help people grow and change. Asha isn’t the only character who grows up in “Secret Daughter.” Both sets of parents also come to terms with the imperfect choices they have made in response to life’s demands.
(Lisa Scottoline is the author of 19 novels, including “Save Me,” published this month.)
