Gingersnaps: A Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

Delorys Welch-Tyson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 1999

You'll never forget them. Six black baby boomers whose paths crisscross and collide in a wickedly funny, emotionally charged roller-coaster ride of love and hate, jealousy and passion, ambition and desire. . . .

Aletha: The reigning queen of the talk shows has a royal snag in her love life. Desiree: As a sister-friend Sigmund Freud, many women "lie" on her couch. Veronica: This TV producer is a master juggler--until the daddy of her baby takes his act on the road.
Debra: As she pushes forty, her mother's pushing her to find a man--in all the wrong directions.
Janeen: Her dreamboat is about to clash with her romantic fantasies big-time.
Louise: When this controversial bestselling author promotes her book, it's a riot--literally.

They're gingersnaps--spicy and hard, brown and bold--women who refuse to let their cookies crumble when faced with a challenge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Less a novel than six character sketches in search of a focus, this breezy, featherweight debut chronicles the loves and ambitions of several fantastically successful black women. Aletha Brown, a 37-year-old Oprah-like talk-show hostess, spends most of her time moping and envying the bliss of her older sister, Desiree, whose existence includes a successful New York psychiatric practice, a Connecticut home and marriage to a bestselling Jewish novelist. By contrast, Aletha has just shot her boyfriend, reporter and aspiring novelist Reggie Pinkney, after finding him in bed with a literary agent. Although the wound wasn't fatal, Aletha is in such a snit over the breakup that she fires Veronica, her producer, for having had a child out of wedlock. Rounding out the histrionic cast are Debra, a PR flak who masks her lesbian leanings with a strong desire to marry the right black man, and Janeen, whose 20-year friendship and hoped-for marriage to Desiree and Aletha's brother Marshall is doomed when he declares his undying love for Veronica's cousin Eric. Finally, there is Louise, who bears no direct relationship to any of the other characters except that she is promoting her how-to-snare-a-black-man self-help book on the Aletha Brown Show. Readers who get through this preposterous soap opera will forget the characters as soon as they put down the book. (Oct.) FYI: A sample chapter of Gingersnaps has been distributed to African American beauty parlors across the country.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The author designates her main female characters "gingersnaps--spicy, and hard, brown and bold--women who refuse to let their cookies crumble when faced with a challenge." The six snaps include Aletha, a talk-show host; her sister Desiree, the psychologist; Veronica, the executive director of Aletha's show; Debra, a patient of Desiree's; Janeen, a hot interior-decorator involved with Aletha and Desiree's brother; and Louise, a best-selling author. All of the women have experiences that elicit actions that affect their relationships with each other and the men in their lives. They engage and interact in a world filled with jealousy, ambition, love, and hate, yet each possesses that inner strength to overcome adversity and rebound with style. Another African American fictional tale destined for the best-seller list. Lillian Lewis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (September 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345430131
• ISBN-13: 978-0345430137
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,528,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Delorys Welch-Tyson is a painter, writer and native New Yorker. After working for a number of years in corporate communications, she opened an art gallery in NYC's Tribeca. In 1998 she published her first novel, Gingersnaps with the Random House Publishing Group. She now resides in the South of France.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terry McMillan's Not So Bad After All!, December 14, 1999

By 

Deone Wilhite - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gingersnaps: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

Where's Mother Love? I need to go on "Forgive and Forget" and apologize to Terry McMillan. Just when I demonized her for her rough and hostile treatment of Black men in her novels, along comes an author that makes her look like an absolute angel. Gingersnaps is one of the most blatant attacks on Black-on-Black love relationships that I have ever read! It's clear the author of this book had an agenda besides telling a story, as there were absolutely no positive Black man/Black woman relationships featured in the book. The Black woman character who who expressed in interest in dating only Black men was presented as some sort of hostile, racist, borderline psychotic with lesbian tendancies. Everyone else presented had some serious personal and relationship issues, that, as the author brazenly shows, can only be solved by hooking up with anyone who is not of African descent. Did anyone else notice that the only character in the book presented as intelligent, mature, and grounded was a Black woman psychologist married to a White man (hmmm... I wonder what message is being sent there?). All of the Black on Black relationships in the book were dsyfunctional, and none of the book's characters exhibited any sort of mental and spiritual maturing you would normally like to see in a character as a story progresses. Even the talk show host never showed any signs of growth or maturity, even after a man was killed on the set of her show. Some of the other reviews I have read said this book should open Black women's minds up to as to their dating options (meaning date anything other than Black!) Well, this book doesn't subtly "open your mind up" to dating options, it blantantly blows it apart with a shotgun! If you want to date interracially, that's your biz, but don't dog your brothers and sisters because of it. Hey, if I'm overreacting, I'm sorry, but I'm a Black man and I'm a little sensitive to some to the mess presented in this book. Terry, I apologize! You weren't so bad after all!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Book Was Pretty Darn Bad!, July 30, 2000

By 

Michelle Simmons - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gingersnaps: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

Actually, it was atrocious. I don't think I need to say much, because most of the other reviews hit on everything that's bad about the book: too many characters, only two of which are paid enough attention to; making Black women into caricatures to drive home the author's point of finding happiness in a relationship with someone of another race; using outlandish adjectives to describe the most common things, just to name a few. And what was with the author's obsession with Jews? All of the characters were unrealistic. Aletha is the only one I can buy, because she was a celebrity, so I could see her being that self-absorbed and expecting things to always go her way. But Desiree is just so PERFECT! Just because she's a psychologist, and married to a Jewish man? Get real! Marrying outside of your race does not guarantee marital bliss anymore than marrying someone of the same race does. I was pretty interested in Veronica's story, but the author left us hanging. Debra was absolutely ridiculous, and I can't tell if Tyson was implying that her negative experiences with Black men had driven her to lesbianism, or if she was just in such denial that she kept dating men even though she really liked women. Either way, that character looked like a total idiot, and Tyson did a bang-up job of offending lesbians, Black men, and Black women in one fell swoop. Janeen and Louise were both pretty minimal characters, and just plain stupid. Too stupid for me to even waste time writing about.

Here's what I got out of reading Gingersnaps: psychologists, Jewish MEN, and people in interracial relationships have got their stuff together. The rest of us, particularly Black women who want to be in relationships with Black men, are just crazy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Yeah, My Mind Was Snapping, December 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Gingersnaps: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

I really, really wish I read the reviews from here before I purchased this book. I couldn't even finish reading it, I thought I was going out of my mind with confusion and boredom. I thought the dialogue was too long,too pointless, with too many vague flashbacks. I felt the novel was more of the writers personal views on matters being voice through her characters than it was actually a "story". The characters were not well developed at all, and they were unrealistic to me. It's sad to think that forty year old women would act as childish and immature as she presented her characters to be. You'd think at that age a woman would be more mature and grounded. I'm sorry, maybe her next efforts will be better.