The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues

Starred review from July 10, 2017
Moore (The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat) returns to Plainview, Ind., to tell further delightful tales of the Supremes, with story lines filled with music and the pain between fathers and their adult children. If these Supremes were a musical group rather than childhood friends with a nickname that has lasted decades, Odette Henry would be the lead singer. She is always trying to help those around her and has become accustomed to receiving sometimes-useful advice from her dead mother and other spirits. Odette and her friend Barbara Jean Carlson hope to orchestrate a reconciliation between blues man El Walker, long absent from town, and his son, Odette’s husband, James. Other plot threads follow the third Supreme, Clarice Baker, who’s struggling with nerves before her Chicago piano concert. Moore weaves these and other strands together beautifully, with humor balancing out the more painful moments. His characters, both living and dead, come together to make a wonderful whole.

April 15, 2017
The three childhood friends Moore introduced in The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (2013) are now in their early 60s and facing new challenges.The three "Supremes" of Plainview, Indiana--a name that emphasizes the unpretentious tone of Moore's storytelling--are down-home African-American women, except that Clarice is a concert pianist with a penchant for Beethoven, Barbara Jean is Plainview's wealthiest philanthropist, and Odette--well, Odette talks to the dead. At the unlikely wedding of Clarice's religious-zealot mother to the owner of a dive called the Pink Slipper Gentlemen's Club that has only recently become "a respected music venue," all three friends are moved by elderly blues singer El Walker's rendition of the "Happy Heartache Blues." And thus hangs the thread that winds a plot ever so loosely through the novel. El is actually Marcus Henry and the father of Odette's husband, James. While a heroin addict, El abandoned his wife and small son after accidentally slicing James with a razor blade. El is off drugs, but diabetes lands him in the hospital, where his identity is revealed. As Odette tries to find a way for James and El to come to terms with each other, Clarice prepares for her big breakthrough concert in Chicago. Separated from her philandering husband, Richmond, she's enjoying her independence and their continuing active sex life, but she feels increasingly stifled by Richmond's needy desire for the kind of intimacy he withheld in the past. Recovering alcoholic Barbara Jean is in a happy second marriage and gets less page time than her friends. Subplots meander along concerning both serious issues like a father's cruelty to his gay, cross-dressing son and sitcom cliches like a pompous, big-hatted would-be preacher lady whose hateful pretensions are exposed by an open microphone. Religion is central to most of these lives although its form ranges from fundamentalist Baptist to Unitarian. This is comfort-food fiction, undemanding and full of Moore's sweet but not saccharine affection for his characters.

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June 1, 2017

Readers will be pleased to catch up with the three lifelong friends, dubbed in high school "the Supremes," from the author's best-selling debut, The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat. A cast of quirky residents of Plainview, IN, from Baptist assistant pastors to traveling bluesmen, orbits now middle-aged Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean in this story of family, friendship, and forgiveness. The novel opens with an unusual wedding scene involving a pair of octogenerians who once were sworn enemies. Sensitive, strong, sharp-tongued Odette narrates several chapters, providing insight on each new crisis (big or small) gleaned from living in a small town or from her dead mama, who pops up unexpectedly to chat. VERDICT Moore's bluesy, breezy novel takes readers through life's highs and lows and in-between times when no one knows what is coming next; its air of folksy optimism should appeal to fans of Alexander McCall Smith and Fredrik Backman. [See Prepub Alert, 12/19/16.]--Laurie Cavanaugh, Thayer P.L., Braintree, MA

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