Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Walker, Alice) [Hardcover]

Alice Walker (Author)

Book Description

Series: Walker, Alice | Publication Date: April 20, 2004

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar now gives us a beautiful new novel that is at once a deeply moving personal story and a powerful spiritual journey.

In Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker has created a work that ranks among her ?nest achievements: the story of a woman’s spiritual adventure that becomes a passage through time, a quest for self, and a collision with love.

Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married many times, she has lived a life rich with explorations of the natural world and the human soul. Now, at fifty-seven, she leaves her lover, Yolo, to embark on a new excursion, one that begins on the Colorado River, proceeds through the past, and flows, inexorably, into the future. As Yolo begins his own parallel voyage, Kate encounters celibates and lovers, shamans and snakes, memories of family disaster and marital discord, and emerges at a place where nothing remains but love.

Told with the accessible style and deep feeling that are its author’s hallmarks, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart is Alice Walker’s most surprising achievement.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kate Talkingtree, the 57-year-old writer protagonist of Walker's latest concoction, is a lifelong seeker after enlightenment in the carnal, political and religious realms. After dreaming of a dry river, she decides to take this as a spiritual clue and makes two river-centric spiritual quests. In one, she embarks on an all-female white-water rafting trip down the Colorado River, coming home to her boyfriend, Yolo, a painter, with potentially startling news. She has decided that it is time to give up her sexual life and "enter another: the life of the virgin." Yolo, a feminist-friendly guy, takes this as well as he can. Soon Kate is off on another quest, this time in the Amazon rain forest, where she hopes to heal herself through trances induced by yag‚ administered by an Amazonian shaman, Armando Juarez. Yag‚, a hallucinogenic beverage, is also known as Grandmother to the native peoples. Indeed, it turns out that Kate's Grandmother archetype-representing the Earth, the ancestors and those violated by patriarchy and racism-has been calling out to her. Meanwhile, Yolo, on vacation in Hawaii, encounters a transsexual Polynesian shaman, or Mahu, who charges him with the mission of giving up addictive substances. A subplot involving corporations conspiring to patent yag‚ creates an unintended irony: isn't the mindset that exploits native wisdom for Western corporate greed similar to the mindset that exploits native rituals for the sake of Western spiritual "healing"? Luckily, followers of the goddess, and presumably Walker's readers, are not very keen on irony. Those who retain some affection for that hopelessly outdated and patriarchal trope are advised to bypass this inflated paean to the self.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Kate, a successful author fearful of aging and uncertain about continuing her relationship with Yolo, an artist, sets off on a journey of spiritual discovery. She has been profoundly unhappy for some time, dreaming of rivers, until she takes off for rivers--the Colorado and the Amazon. Among strangers, Kate is able to distance herself from her life and her relationship. Yolo, on his own separate journey, meets a former lover, a Hawaiian woman now overweight and weighed down with the recent loss of her son to a drug overdose and a sense that she--like her son--has lost her way. Kate finds growing intimacy among a group of disparate souls who unburden themselves of their pasts under the influence of yage, a South American medicinal herb. Kate finds that the herb allows her to reveal her innermost secrets and puts her in touch with the elders. Despite their frictions, Kate and Yolo have similar reawakenings about the land as mother, overcoming personal and ethnic oppression, and dismantling barriers between the sexes, the races, and young and old. Walker's dreamlike novel incorporates the political and spiritual consciousness and emotional style for which she is known and appreciated. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1ST edition (April 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400061733
• ISBN-13: 978-1400061730
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,231,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alice Walker is one of the most prolific writers of our time, known for her literary fiction, including the Pultizer Prize-winning The Color Purple, her many volumes of poetry, and her powerful nonfiction collections. Walker's most recent book is The Chicken Chronicles, a memoir. Her advocacy for the dispossessed has spanned the globe. She lives in Northern California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now is the time to pick up this book!, April 20, 2004

By 

John K "landslide078" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Walker, Alice) (Hardcover)

Alice Walker has done it again. She has created a deeply rich world full of amazing characters that you hate to leave when the book is finished. Unlike most of her other works, this book has an extremely modern feel to it. It takes place in the present, and although it happens mostly in the jungles, it still feels like home.

Kate, the main character inspired by Walker's grandmother, channels a lot of Walkers feelings about the world today, and growing older. In the past, I've always felt the ancestors in Walker's work, but never much of herself. This book combines the two elements beautifully.

Do yourself a favor and big pick up this remarkable book, by one of the greatest voices of our time.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Humanity pondered, October 8, 2004

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Walker, Alice) (Hardcover)

When Alice Walker, the earthy literary wordsmith, releases a new book, I feel
an unmistakable pull that compels me to not only buy the book but to read it.
So, when NOW IS THE TIME TO OPEN YOUR HEART was released
I did as the unforeseen forces commanded, I bought and read the book
and I haven't regretted one solitary reflective moment since I did.

In NOW IS THE TIME TO OPEN YOUR HEART, we meet Kate, a successful author who
is pondering her life. She seems to have reached a crossroads of sorts where
she is trying to unearth the meaning of her existence. This search leads her
on a number of soul-searching journeys that ultimately leads Kate to a truer
understanding of herself and others around her.

In true Walker style, this novel is filled with wonderful symbolism and
experiences which draw the reader in and makes him/her a part of the main
character's quest. Walker's characters deal with a myriad of issues including
aging, sexuality, religion, abuse, and defining oneself. I found myself
disappointed when I read the final words. I wanted the journey to continue
and somehow, after reading NOW IS THE TIME TO OPEN YOUR HEART, I think Walker
wants it to as well.

Reviewed by Diane Marbury
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars top three??, January 16, 2006

By 

Dr. Skye Hughes (Kenya) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Walker, Alice) (Hardcover)

Despite enjoying previous works by this author, I actually stayed awake last night contemplating whether this novel was in my top three worst novels of all time. Why? It is meandering, cliched, downright offensive in terms of stereotypes and the main characters Kate and Yolo generally bear no resemblance to real people. To compound the problem, the other characters who play supporting roles are hollow shells used merely to make didactic points about oppression and abuse. Being black is depicted in terms of such simplistic stereotypes as "being more tolerant than anyone else", being native American is "being in touch with the land" and being white has nothing positive to say for it at all.
For example, the author seems unaware that if Kate actually lived in Africa as I do, her sexuality would be enough to get her thrown into jail by virtually every African government of the day and would result in her being an outcast by local communities. That's the level of tolerance here in the Motherland.
My point ultimately is that this novel is ahistorical, ill-informed and in terms of simple entertainment value - particularly tedious if you have any interest in wit, irony, insightfulness or relevance. Don't waste your money.