Genevieve [Paperback]

Eric Jerome Dickey (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Penguin Group USA (April 1, 2006)
• ASIN: B001E3E44U
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (204 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Eric Jerome Dickey is the author of twelve novels, including the bestsellers Genevieve, Drive Me Crazy, Naughty or Nice, The Other Woman, and Thieves' Paradise. Dickey writes full time and is developing a six-issue mini-series of comic books for Marvel Enterprises featuring Storm (X-Men) and the Black Panther.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A JAWDROPPER!!!!!, May 10, 2005

By 

Dana Y. Bowles "DYB" (West Chester, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Genevieve (Hardcover)

In yet another amazing tale from EJD, another nameless husband narrates the story of his wife, his marriage, and his own infidelity. Genevieve Forbes is an accomplished businesswoman with a doctorate in her field. She is beautiful and smart, but leaves her husband wanting in the bedroom. She says she loves him, but she seems only able to perform her marital "duties," leaving her spouse feeling inadequate as a lover, and subconsciously looking for passion elsewhere. Elsewhere appears in the form of the gorgeous Kenya, when his wife is summoned home to Alabama as the result of the death of her grandmother. Kenya is young and uninhibited, and the husband of Dr. Forbes finds her impossible to resist. But this southern journey also affords this husband a glimpse into his wife's past; a past that is so filled with abuse and neglect that it has continued to impact her life and the way that she loves in the physical sense.
What her husband soon finds out is that this in no way affects her ability to love him from her soul.

Filled with secrets, drama, and the author's poetic prose that we've come to know so well, Genevieve is a beautiful story that forces us to examine our closest relationships and what we view as important.


DYB

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sex, Lies, Race and Dysfunction--Southern Style, June 23, 2005

By 

Dera R Williams (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Genevieve (Hardcover)

Eric Jerome Dickey is back with his superb storytelling, this time it is a marriage in crisis in Genevieve. The unnamed narrator is a Buppie who has got it all; a career in medical research, a beautiful home in the Los Angeles hills and a beautiful wife with whom he is crazy in love. Genevieve; zhawn-vee-ehv, that is how she wants her name pronounced. This is just one precise thing about this woman who is beautiful, educated and accomplished. Married two years, the couple is brought face-to-face with their pasts when a phone call in the night sends them to rural Alabama to confront their present.

At first Genevieve intends to travel alone to bury her maternal grandmother but her husband who knows nothing of her family insists on going with her. This trip proves to reveal the cracks in the façade they have been living as all is revealed. In flashback we learn of the narrator's childhood in Texas with his mother and the tragic accident that changed his life and his move to Fresno, California to live with his grandparents. The pain of his loneliness and insecurities are also revealed as well as his frustration with the couple's intimacy or lack thereof. It is indeed his insatiable sexual appetite and intensity that threatens the core of his marriage.

Genevieve must face her demons and when she reunites with the assorted personalities in her family, a Pandora's Box of secrets is opened. There is white Grandpa Fred, who has a Confederate flag and is confined to a wheelchair. There are her various brothers and then there is Kenya. Sexy, sassy and feisty, she brings on the drama replete with tattoos and a motorcycle driving boyfriend. Genevieve is transformed before her husband's eyes from a sophisticated, assured woman to a little girl who hurts, cries and loses control. Who are these people?

EJD does it again. His complex and intense characterizations and dialogue are realistic, the settings are peppered with detailed imagery and his prose is filled with beautiful language and metaphors. His impeccable research with attention to detail is evident. It all fits together in the telling of the story, the racial and sexual politics, the hypocrisy of race in America, the human frailties that make us just people who are caught up in events and circumstances not of our own making but by virtual of our individual and collective histories. Readers are kept on their toes with unexpected twists and turns, straight through to the very end. It is amazing how the author can write a book that covers a span of about two or three days that in reality explores a lifetime. A great summer read.


Dera Williams
APOOO BookClub

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Glad I Bought It Used for $8, August 8, 2005

By 

K. Walton (LA, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Genevieve (Hardcover)

I hate to join the chorus, but I'm done! May the REAL EDJ of "Friends and Lovers" (my favorite) and "Sister, Sister" rest in peace...

Is it me or are his books becoming less focused on developing quality fiction and more focused on erotica?

Eric, most of your readers have had sex before! We don't need the "step 1, step 2" guide in every...single...scene to understand how it's done. We got it! Move on!!

The scenes in about the first half of this book seem to be A) a set up to get people who aren't supposed to be in bed together in bed, B) the actual sex, OR C) the tension/conflict/remorse felt by these folks when they get out of the beds they shouldn't have been in in the first place.

I've heard that EJD is pretty deep into erotica/porn in his personal life, but its become almost a featured aspect of his most recent books. He needs to just publish a couple erotica books like Zane and get it out of his system!

I did like how he slowly reveals the main character's past throughout the entire book so you get more understanding into her. I also liked how he drops a bomb on you about some things in Genevieve's husband's past. This makes this book BY FAR superior to his last few, but still inferior to his earlier work.

Overall, this is not the same guy who wrote Friends and Lovers and Sister, Sister. May that EJD rest in peace. He will be missed... Well, it seems from reader reviews that he has been for quite a while. :(