Kin: Oprah's Book Club
A Novel
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4.5 • 275 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK •
A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR
“Tayari Jones’s storytelling washed over me like a trip back home. . . . Kin is a masterpiece of a novel that will live with you long after you turn the last page.” —Oprah Winfrey
Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Tayari Jones’ poignantly titled novel Kin digs into the tenderest and most deeply felt meaning of the word. Growing up in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, Annie and Niecy both lost their mothers when they were far too young to understand. Annie is brash and outgoing while Niecy is pensive and withdrawn, but their mutual grief forges a connection between them that’s more powerful and intimate than they share with anyone else. It’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching experience to follow these young Black women as they travel their own diverging paths out into the world of the 1950s and ’60s American South. Even throughout Annie’s sometimes-reckless vagabond search for the mother who abandoned her and Niecy’s eye-opening experiences with class disparities and the civil rights movement at college, their lifelong bond stretches—but never breaks. A story of spiritual sisterhood and surrogate motherhood, Kin is heartbreaking in the best possible way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jones (An American Marriage) delivers a triumphant novel of two motherless girls from rural Honeysuckle, La., who follow very different paths into adulthood. Vernice "Niecy" Davis is orphaned as an infant and raised reluctantly by her free-spirited aunt Irene, who dispenses such advice as "If you ever get a chance in life, grab you a preacher, but just temporarily. Don't fool around and end up being somebody's first lady." Before Niecy learns to talk, she befriends Annie Johnson, who's being raised by her grandmother after her "trifling" mother, Hattie Lee, left her at one month old. In Annie and Niecy's alternating narration, the women reflect on their abandonment—Niecy's in a permanent sense, as her father killed her mother and himself, while Annie always hopes that someday Hattie Lee will return and grow to love her. After high school, Niecy leaves for Spelman College in Atlanta, where her wealthy roommate, Joette, nicknames her "country mouse" and chastises her for spending so much time thinking about her "other girlfriend," Annie, who's been writing to Niecy about her torrid misadventures on the way to Memphis in search of Hattie Lee with her ex-boyfriend's cousin Bobo. Annie's and Niecy's paths continue to diverge, first when Niecy entertains a suitor at Spelman and later when Annie gets unexpectedly pregnant. Still, they remain the most important person to the other even as it feels like they're on "different sides of a waterfall," as Annie puts it in a letter. Throughout, Jones tells her protagonists' stories with grace, humor, and pathos. It's a tour de force.
Customer Reviews
Another Great Read
This was a great book. Tayari’s writing reminds me of J California Cooper.
Extremely boring with pretty prose
I would have given this book 2 stars if it wasn’t for the nicely crafted sentences and well designed chapters of the book. Still, I felt nothing. I didn’t connect to the characters or place. I’d skip it. I don’t understand all the hype. There are so many other great historical novels out now. I just read Good People, The Names, and so many more. Life is too short for this book!
A beautiful and important book
I couldn’t put this book down. At a time when the entire planet is threatened by wealthy, powerful men who use women, immigrants, hatred and division to cling to power, this book is an excellent reminder of the challenges that black people, and particularly black women, have faced and overcome in the U.S. We have come a long way, but there is still so much further to go.