"For sheer reading pleasure Ladee Hubbard’s original and wildly inventive novel is in a class by itself.” —Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Song of Solomon
“[A] rip-roaring adventure.”—ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“...if you love the works of Paul Beatty and Colson Whitehead, you’ll enjoy Ladee Hubbard’s wholly unique view of family and legacy with her dazzling first novel.” —ESSENCE MAGAZINE
“Ladee Hubbard delivers a fascinating twist on DuBois’ notion of the Talented Tenth in her debut
novel… The Talented Ribkins recalls Colson Whitehead’s first novel, The Intuitionist.”—PASTE
“[A] sly, pleasurable first novel.”—NEWSDAY
“A marvel… exceptionally funny, tender and heartbreaking... The Talented Ribkins marks Hubbard as a writer to watch. This tale of self-revelation and recognizing one’s tribe is quite an arrival, filled with both a sense of discovery and hard-won wisdom.”—THE ADVOCATE
“The Talented Ribkins wears its magical realist elements lightly, weaving them into a realistic family story with a wider cultural context. The novel calls out to a range of other books, such as Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon… [with] a hint of Thomas Pynchon... Hubbard is a graceful and intelligent writer in whose hands the Ribkinses' superpowers are both real and symbolic of the dreams and invincibility we have when we're young, and that are inevitably reshaped by age and experience.”—Colette Bancroft, THE TAMPA BAY TIMES
“Original and entertaining… The Talented Ribkins is Clark Kent disguised as Superman. It is a story of redemption and the power of family under the thin cover of a mask, cape and tights. And with Hubbard’s power of imagination, the novel is nothing short of super.” —LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR
“First-time novelist Ladee Hubbard has created a collection of misfits like no other in The Talented Ribkins… fascinating… Hubbard’s tale ultimately transcends race, class and time itself.”—BOOKPAGE
“Ladee Hubbard has written a celebration of family, as well as of the individual.” —NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS
“Debut novelist Ladee Hubbard takes you on a magical-realist road trip… the book is inventive and fast paced, perfect for those who read Colson Whitehead, Michael Chabon, and / or Toni Morrison.”
—BROOKLYN MAGAZINE
“A quirky, bittersweet comedy, Hubbard’s novel offers an original perspective on the legacy of the civil rights movement…Hubbard crafts an irresistible idea of activists with de facto superpowers challenging the racist power structure of mid-20th century America.” —ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
“Both a romp through Florida and a meditation on race, class and politics. … [It’s] Marvel comics meets W.E.B. Dubois’ talented tenth.” —EUGENE WEEKLY
“Author Ladee Hubbard has done an amazing thing with her debut novel. She’s given us a story about history, racism, personal identity, human potential, complicated family relationships, and superheroes. Imagine if W.E.B. Du Bois created Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. Just think how great that would have been.” —SUPERHERONOVELS.COM
"The Talented Ribkins is a joy. It navigates complex and intertwined issues without ever weighing itself down, and manages to do excellent narrative work while also driving a compelling, propulsive plot…Part buddy road trip, part family drama, part social commentary and part magical realism,
The Talented Ribkins is in sure hands with Ladee Hubbard, who weaves these parts into a very enjoyable whole. It’s a fun world in which to be, freckled with moments of clarity and wisdom that make you ache."—BOOKREPORTER.COM
"Crafty and wistful...Hubbard weaves this narrative with prodigious skill and compelling warmth. You anticipate a movie while wondering if any movie could do this fascinating family...well, justice. To describe this novel, as someone inevitably will, as Song of Solomon reimagined as a Marvel Comics franchise is to shortchange its cleverness and audacity." —Starred review, KIRKUS
"Hubbard’s first novel is an aching ballad to cross- generational companionship and the evolution of identity with age. Readers will fall in love with Johnny, Eloise, and the unforgettable folks who pepper their journey. Hubbard’s ear for dialogue and creative character construction make the Ribkins family’s story fly.” —BOOKLIST
"The Talented Ribkins is a charming and delightful debut novel with a profound heart, and Ladee Hubbard’s voice is a welcome original.” —Mary Gaitskill, author of Bad Behavior and Veronica
“The Talented Ribkins is a quest, a treasure hunt, an unearthing of the hopeful and terrible past in service of the future. Wry, with a deft sense of metaphor, Ladee Hubbard delivers a familiar yet uncharted America in which her characters need their superpowers just to survive.” —Stewart O’Nan, author of West of Sunset
“The Talented Ribkins is tender, inventive, sharp, funny, and smart, like going home for a family reunion and remembering mid-argument that your cousins have superpowers. The Ribkins’ various talents and the trouble those talents get them into and out of make this book a riveting read. Its attention to connection, forgiveness, and the problem of figuring out again and again what superpowers it might take to survive being a black family in America make it an important and wildly original debut.” —Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
"What a pleasure it was to take a road trip with The Talented Ribkins, a simultaneously gifted and flawed family, sharp-witted but prone to making utterly human errors. Ladee Hubbard has given us a fresh and original debut novel." —Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown Up
"With The Talented Ribkins, Ladee Hubbard proves herself to be a rare talent who pops onto the scene fully formed as a writer of power and purpose. This is a heart-wrenching quest into the absurdity that is family. Like the best literary fantasies, The Talented Ribkins succeeds because the heart that beats at its center couldn’t be realer.” —Mat Johnson, author of Loving Day and Pym
"Ladee Hubbard’s The Talented Ribkins is a first novel of extraordinary confidence and panache. Brisk, funny, tender, scathing, the book is a road story with teeth, a secret history of those black Americans whom W. E. B. Dubois called 'the talented tenth'—underground, in plain sight, sometimes both at the same time—superheroes of reality." —Zachary Lazar, author of Sway
06/26/2017
Blending the superhuman with the civil rights movement, this debut novel is an ambitious, if uneven, attempt to explore new dimensions of the struggle for racial justice. Johnny Ribkins—a 72-year-old with an uncanny talent for making maps of any place, whether he’s ever seen it or not—has five days to pay a debt to a Florida crime boss. He sets out on a whirlwind tour of the state to dig up all the secret caches of money he’d planted decades earlier, when the Justice Committee—the organization he founded with similarly gifted family members and friends to protect black activists in the ’60s—was dissolving. The ideals that animated the Justice Committee feel long gone: after his dream of making “more theoretical” maps that would chart not just space but “actual corridors of power” failed, Johnny turned to facilitating burglaries using his blueprints. Johnny’s lightning-quick friend Flash is solely focused on getting his sprinter son to the Olympics, while Johnny’s cousin Simone, able to “make people think they were in the presence of the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen,” has used her power to seduce and marry a wealthy judge. The mix of lofty ideals, uncanny skills, and human frailty Hubbard invokes is compelling, but the debt-repayment plot brings with it ever more convoluted revelations about Johnny’s past. Amid these ponderous (and often repetitive) historical detours, Hubbard’s unique conceit never quite becomes the provocative take on race relations it aspires to be. (Aug.)
★ 2017-06-06
Hubbard shrewdly molds the pop-culture mythology of the comic-book superhero team into a magical-realist metaphor for African-American struggles since the real-life heroic battle against segregation in the middle of the 20th century.You've heard of the Justice League? Meet the Justice Committee, an extended family of black crusaders who became legendary for using their extraordinary powers to protect leaders, activists, and their brothers and sisters during the 1960s civil rights movement. When this crafty and wistful debut novel opens in present-day Florida, the committee's surviving members are scattered about, and one in particular, 72-year-old Johnny Ribkins, seems lost and at loose ends. Which is ironic since Johnny's special gift is being able to draw precise maps of places he's never been. (It came in handy when black drivers tried to make their ways safely through the racially segregated South.) But after the committee members drifted apart, Johnny and his brother, Franklin, whose natural wall-climbing skills rivaled those of Spider-Man, merged their talents for high-scale larceny. After Franklin's untimely death, Johnny jump-starts his cartography gifts to track down buried loot from all their varied heists so he can pay off his debt to a shady real estate mogul. Accompanying Johnny in an antique Thunderbird she characterizes as "junky" is his moody teenage niece, Eloise, who's been showing off some of her own inherited uncanniness by being able to catch any object thrown at her. With a pair of thugs shadowing them, Johnny and Eloise stop at various points in the Sunshine State, where they meet, among other relatives, Cousin Bertrand, nicknamed "Captain Dynamite" because he could "spit firecrackers"; another speedy, magnetic cousin known (of course) as "Flash"; and yet another nicknamed "The Hammer" because while her left hand looks normal, her right hand…you can probably guess the rest. With each rueful confrontation with people and places of his past, Johnny comes to grips with lost resolutions, squandered opportunities, and the complex history of a family that began with a patriarch whose superb sense of smell made him "The Rib King." Hubbard weaves this narrative with prodigious skill and compelling warmth. You anticipate a movie while wondering if any movie could do this fascinating family...well, justice. To describe this novel, as someone inevitably will, as Song of Solomon reimagined as a Marvel Comics franchise is to shortchange its cleverness and audacity.
