All the Finest Girls

May 28, 2001
As Styron's mournful but potent debut novel opens, Adelaide Abraham has just arrived on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Clair. Addy, as she's called, is attending the funeral of her childhood nanny, Lou—Louise Alfred—and she's staying not in a hotel, but with Lou's family. For, as becomes clear, Lou was
Addy's family back when Addy was a disturbed and unruly child and her parents' marriage was breaking up. In the course of the three days Addy spends on St. Clair, she learns something about the resentful family Lou left behind. Bitterest is Derek, Lou's younger son, who felt his mother abandoned him when she left to take a job caring for a wealthy white girl. Most disturbed is Lou's father, who thinks Addy is a white property owner who used to accuse him of stealing. Interleaved with Addy's encounters on St. Clair are her memories of the years Lou cared for her. These scenes are vivid and incisive, making it painfully clear that Addy's parents—artists and intellectuals—were too self-involved to manage Addy. In contrast to the direct narration of these sections, the story of Lou's family is told thirdhand, through Addy's reports of her conversations with Lou's sister and sons. While these are carefully rendered, learning Lou's life this way is, as Addy says, like "racing through time on a bullet train, monumental events melting down to smears of color." Styron (daughter of writers William and Rose Styron) beautifully juxtaposes Addy's past and the present on St. Claire, dealing deftly with a series of ironies. Although some readers may find Addy slow to catch on, Styron's gift is to make the reader feel real grief for her characters and real relief for Addy when she begins to make a peace with herself and her parents.

Starred review from April 1, 2001
When Adelaide Kane Abraham travels to the Caribbean island of St. Clair to attend the funeral of her beloved nanny, the realities of grief brush up against the political conditions that sent Louise Alfred to Connecticut to care for her. Adelaide's first lesson occurs immediately, when she discovers that Louise's kin are less than thrilled to meet her. Indeed, some folks including the children Lou abandoned when she took the job with the Abrahams are downright hostile. As she begins to probe, Addie discovers that she barely knew Louise; shamefully, she had never even considered the conditions that sent her "black mother" hurtling north. As the truth about Louise's life unfolds, Addie is forced to deconstruct her ideas about race and class. The result is a resonant, wise novel, told simply and nonrhetorically. Although readers will close the book uncertain about the ways in which Addie will use her newfound sensitivity, one cannot help but be optimistic, sure that she will somehow change herself, if not the world. A terrific debut by a stunning writer who is also the daughter of novelist William Styron, this novel is highly recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/01.] Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, New York

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2001
Adelaide Abraham emerges from the carefully constructed framework of her life when she travels to the Caribbean Island of St. Clair for the funeral of childhood caregiver, Louise Alfred. Addy is uncertain of why she has traveled so far for the funeral of someone she hasn't thought of in years, and the Alfred family's disdain for Lou's privileged neurotic charge from the U.S. is painfully apparent. Ensconced in their own familial grief and irritated by her jittery personality, the Alfreds install Addy in Lou's old bedroom and promptly disregard her. Surrounded by the serenity of Lou's belongings, and flooded by distressing childhood memories of her parents' volatile marriage and the scathing war that endured between them, Addy begins to unravel the knotted emotions that have made her adult life a shallow protective void. Styron's first novel is a journey back from a dark childhood of mental dementia to liberation at maturity's crossroads, where a collision of parental shortcomings and personal emotional accountability resolves to emancipate the spirit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)