Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

The most beautifully written book I have read in years. I was a bit lost in the end (the last 20 pages), but I just kept reading. Many times I had to put the book down and take a couple of deep breaths before I could continue, I was so moved by both the writing and the story.

The writing in this dark ghost story is remarkably beautiful. We meet a family that has been scarred by racism, yet perseveres with love. Leonie heads out on a road trip to pick up her boyfriend (baby daddy) from prison. She brings her 13 yr old son and toddler daughter along. The kids have inherited an ability to see spirits - like their grandma can. Leonie only sees them when she's high. Two of the family's dead - an uncle and a great uncle regularly appear to the kids, interacting so that we can see their stories and appreciate the history of the family. Difficult truths rise up. relationships are tested. Love endures. The prose is lyrical and delightful to listen to in this audiobook narrated by 3 persons -Leonie, her son Jojo and Richie, the great uncle.

It's interesting when you realize you are drawn towards a certain subgenre. I really like reading Flannery O'Connor and I really liked reading this book. So, I must really like Southern Gothic.

I started this in February and I picked it up and put it down often. I read other books in between. There's no particular reason, I thought, but there is. We have a story of Jojo, his little sister Kayla, mom Leonie, granddad and grandma, who are all black. Leonie's baby daddy is Michael, a white man, whose parents are a thousand percent against Leonie and the kids.

Pop, the granddad, clearly loves his grandkids and deals with his daughter. Leonie is a meth addict and, while you see she loves her kids, they are not first in her life. They are not even second or third. That in itself was difficult. You get Jojo's POV often as well as Leonie's so you get to see both sides of the struggle between the two. I both wanted to shake and hug Leonie. And just plain wanted to hug Jojo.

Enter Michael. A felon and pretty much a "not going to amount to anything" person. The book centers around the road trip that Leonie, Jojo, Kayla and Leonie's friend, Misty, take to pick up Michael when he's released from prison. It's a terrible trip with meth, police, kids left starving because they are forgotten, kids getting sick and getting smacked for it, just....tough to read.

Lest you think it's just a road trip novel, we have Pop's history. Racism, very ugly racism, rears it's head in his past and comes into Jojo's future in the form of a ghost who hitches a ride back from the prison. Jojo and Leonie have a gift for seeing the dead, but the dead are there to remind them of failures. Just another weight on the shoulders of people who are shouldering too much.

Don't let the ghost aspect throw you off. It's so well written that the ghosts are fully developed characters who get their own POV chapters to give you more insight into the lives that were led and ended abruptly.

Highly recommend this one!

The end took me out !!!

The grip of drug addiction is exposed, laid bare in this story set in the southernmost region of Mississippi. The poignantly rendered characters will tear your heart out, like Jojo and his grandfather who raised him, cast as the ones who stumble through the rubble of a life crumbling from addiction. Jojo, still a boy, is his sister’s mother figure, feeding her at night, singing to her. He says of his mother, who disappears for days, “Leonie kill things.” A summation that can be said for the affects of drug addition in families throughout America. When Leonie uses, she sees visions of her brother, “chemical figments” that “came to me every time I snorted a line, every time I popped a pill.” This Given, her brother who was murdered by friends, is her conscience, a reminder of the “before” Leonie, the one who was once strong and destined for better things. “He was watching me, like always. He had mama’s face.” These visions, a gift her dying mother shares, “..runs in the blood, like silt in river water.” They lend a supernatural component to the story, like angels who nudge us to dig deep, to unearth our better selves, to fight against the need for an anesthetic, for numbing oneself to the world that is ours now instead of living in pursuit of a better end. Leonie and her family are swept into the scorched-earth legacy of illegal drug proliferation in America, and Jesmyn Ward has magnificently laid this out for us to see, to know. One can’t help but reflect the broader picture, question who looked away while companies with predatory marketing practices enabled an epidemic of drug addiction that trapped our country’s poorest into a life of misery and hopelessness. In the headlines, four major companies, one a household name, agreed to pay $21 billion for the opioid crises. They can afford the cash outlay, but the lives of those caught in their webs of financial gain have been lost, whether they live or die. This affecting story is told with such courage and heart, it will break you. You will never again be able to look away, sink back into that safe-space comfort of unknowing.