Tayari Jones is the author of two previous novels. Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. She serves on the MFA faculty at Rutgers and blogs on writing at www.tayari jones.com/blog.
Silver Sparrow
by Tayari Jones
Paperback
- ISBN-13: 9781616201425
- Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
- Publication date: 05/08/2012
- Pages: 368
- Sales rank: 25,699
- Product dimensions: 5.54(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.96(d)
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With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s two families—the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed “one of the most important writers of her generation” (the Atlanta Journal Constitution).
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“Beautifully written, Silver Sparrow will break your heart.”—Brooklyn Rail
“[Jones] is fast defining middle-class black Atlanta the way Cheever did Westchester” – Village Voice
“Tayari Jones has taken Atlanta for her literary terroir, and like many of our finest novelists, she gives readers a sense of place in a deeply observed way. But more than that, Jones has created in her main characters tour guides of that region: honest, hurt, observant and compelling young women whose voices cannot be ignored . . . Impossible to put down until you find out how these sisters will discover their own versions of family.”
—Los Angeles Times
“An amazing, amazing read.”
—Jennifer Weiner on NBC’s Today show
“Tayari Jones’s immensely pleasurable new novel pulls off a minor miracle . . . Jones crafts an affecting tale about things, big and small, we forfeit to forge a family . . . There are no winners in this empathetic and provocative story, just survivors.” —More
“A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones’s skill for wry understatement never wavers.” —O: The Oprah Magazine
“That Jones offers no pat answers is the secret sauce spicing Silver Sparrow. The prose goes down so compulsively that it might be easy to miss the heart of the story. She shines a light on a particular disenfranchised group, the children who grow up in second families.” —The Denver Post
“Populating this absorbing novel is a vivid cast of characters . . . Jones writes dialogue that is realistic and sparkling, with an intuitive sense of how much to reveal and when . . . One of literature’s most intriguing extended families.” —The Washington Post
“Jones gives us permission to love all of the novel’s women, though they are flawed and often refuse to love each other. That’s a recipe for great book club discussions.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“[An] expansive third novel…Jones effectively blends the sisters’ varied, flawed perspectives as the characters struggle with presumptions of family and the unwieldy binds of love and identity.”—Booklist
“Absorbing . . . Jones writes dialogue that is realistic and sparkling, with an intuitive sense of how much to reveal and when.”--Washington Post
“Tayari Jones's immensely pleasurable new novel pulls off a minor miracle... Subtly exploring the power of labels... Jones crafts an affecting tale about things, big and small, we forfeit to forge a family. There are no winners in this empathetic and provocative story, only survivors.”—MORE
“Charting a vast emotional unknown is Tayari Jones's compelling third novel, Silver Sparrow, in which a teenage girl's coming of age in 1990s Atlanta is shadowed by her dawning understanding of a corrosive secret – her father's second family.” – Vogue
“Nakedly honest...dazzlingly charged” —Atlanta Journal Constitution
“This is a heartbreaking story of two sisters, unknown to each other at first, who find and love each other for a short time in their lives.” – The Oklahoman
“This is a precisely written, meticulously controlled work. It’s also one that leaves room for the messiness of fragmented lives — an impressive command of the craft at hand, and its paradoxes.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“If your mom is a fan of emotionally charged morality tales (and whose mom isn’t?), she’s going to devour Tayari Jones’s third novel, Silver Sparrow, in a single sitting. Jones, a native Atlantan, once again mines her town for material and strikes serious pay dirt. Sparrow introduces us to sisters Dana Lynn Yarboro and Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon, who were born four months apart from different mothers and have never met. One reason? Their father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist who has gone to great pains to ensure they remain in the dark about each other. And when they do meet, that’s when Sparrow gets really good.”—Essence
“A graceful and shining work about finding the truth.” – Library Journal, starred review
“A tense, layered and evocative tale...Jones explores the rivalry and connection of siblings, the meaning of beauty, the perils of young womanhood, the complexities of romantic relationships and the contemporary African-American experience.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Impossible to put down until you find out how these sisters will discover their own versions of family.”—Los Angeles Times
“It’s an amazing, amazing read.”—Jennifer Weiner on NBC’s “The Today Show”
In her third novel set in Atlanta, Jones (The Untelling, 2005, etc.) writes about two African-American half sisters, only one of whom knows that the other exists until their father's double life starts to unravel.
When James Witherspoon, the owner of a successful limousine service, and Gwendolyn Yarboro have their marriage ceremony in 1969 four months after the birth of their baby Dana, Gwen knows that James already has a wife and an even younger baby. While James, who visits regularly if never often enough, and Gwen, a practical nurse, make sure Dana has every middle-class advantage, Dana grows up aware that her parents' "marriage" is a secret and that she cannot openly claim her father; James' devoted stepbrother Raleigh is listed on her birth certificate. Gwen and Dana habitually spy on James' legitimate wife Laverne and daughter Chaurisse, who live in blissful ignorance of James's bigamy. By adolescence, Dana, who attends a prestigious magnate high school and wants to attend Mount Holyoke, increasingly resents the plainer, less gifted Chaurisse, whose needs always seem to come first for James. After meeting Chaurisse by accident at a science fair, Dana finds ways for their paths to intersect. When she finally "befriends" Chaurisse, Chaurisse is thrilled that a popular girl likes her enough to visit her at home. Visits happen during hours Dana knows James will not be there. Dana's adolescent plans, for acceptance as much as revenge, inevitably go awry, but this is less a tragedy than a case of survival and making do. While Dana is at the novel's center, Jones gives both girls' points of view, allowing readers to empathize with each of James's families. Chaurisse may not know about Dana, but she is far from blissful in her ignorance, and her mother Laverne has endured more than her fair share of suffering. James is harder to fathom but also hard to hate.
Jones beautifully evokes Atlanta in the 1980s while creating gritty, imperfect characters whose pain lingers in the reader's heart.