Customer Reviews

The Professor's Daughter: A Novel

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A glittering debut from a young author who is definitely going places. Raboteau molds her characters with a delicate, cunning hand. I had the sense that she took great care in polishing the book because the story seemed to flow effortlessly, almost as if Emma, Bernie, and others were propelling themselves.

Raboteau's skill is most striking in small descriptions, in details, where her style is poignant, sometimes disarmingly brilliant. If you haven't read "Kavita Through Glass" in The Best American Short Stories 2003, you're missing out. There, too, Raboteau makes the most out of subtlety and understatement, speaking with a quiet voice that somehow resounds.

Issues of gender, questions of identity and the ever-present difficulties of race highlight this witty and fast-paced intergenerational saga from author Emily Raboteau. The Professor's Daughter quirkily jumps along, and tells of the turbulent and tumultuous life of Emma Boudreaux. Emma is a woman of mixed race, who is forced to re-examine her life and look back into her past when her respected and venerated older brother Bernie has a terrible accident and ends up in a coma.

Alternating between sections on Emma, and Bernard, her father. Raboteau is cleverly able to underscore the difficulties that mixed-race children face, while also highlighting the terrible injustices that existed in the South during the last century. Raboteau has a gorgeously slight and honeyed style that avoids becoming heavy-handed or preachy, and her ability to instill offbeat humor into the most terrible situations show she's a writer of tremendous talent and promise. Maybe this is why the Professor's Daughter packs such a powerful emotional and expressive punch.

Raised in a shack in Mississippi, Bernard Boudreaux was a truly gifted student. Encouraged by is caretaker Nan Zan and his eccentric Uncle Luscious, Bernard's talents get him into a prestigious Catholic boarding school for boys in New Orleans. Being the first and only African-American student to attend, he is forced to confront some of the most terrifyingly cruel racist jokes. Regarded as a "contaminant" by the parents of the wealthy white students, he's subjected to bashings and violence on an almost daily basis. These experiences, along with the truth about his father's terrible death, shape the rest of Bernard's life.

Bernard goes ahead and marries a white woman, so his children won't have to inherit his misfortune. Like a "game to protect evil" Bernard hopes that Emma and Bernie will be shielded from the racism that has constantly plagued him. But their mixed race causes Emma and Bernie to feel alienated from both black and white culture. Emma's journey is one of not only self-acceptance and "fitting in" but also the passage towards her own self-identity. Through her brother's terrible accident, and the discovery of her grandfather's secret lynching at the hands of racists, Emma is gradually able to move on.

Emma is a fabulously three-dimensional character. Whether she is worrying over having sex with her boyfriend, or lecturing her mother about "getting a life, she's forever emotionally complex, reflective, and studious. Her willful strength of mind even extends to the ability to produce mysteriously and violent rashes over her face and body, which cause her no end of pain and embarrassment. Emma's own individuality is so strongly connected with her brother's and that, upon losing him; she struggles to find her own true self.

Raboteau has a definite ear for natural language, and her dialogue is often sparse but always hits the mark. In some passages, Raboteau even tries her hand at magical realism, particularly when describing Emma's thoughts on a beautifully nubile, homesick Ethiopian who seeks to end a local deer hunt. The Professor's Daughter is a totally compelling and forceful account of what it's like to grow up half-white and half-black in a world that unfortunately likes to have clear-cut, and often-straightforward definitions about race and skin colour. Mike Leonard March 05.

This book isn't bad, but it's written in a choppy style that makes it hard to follow the "story" and feel close to the characters. Emma Boudreaux seemed like a ghost rather than a full-fledged person. Also, I felt that I was told about her close relationship to her brother rather than allowed to experience it firsthand. I agree with the reviewer who said this reads like a journal or "emotional toilet" of some kind. That said, I do believe Emily Raboteau is a talented writer. I'll certainly read future works by her.

I found this book riveting, from the first page to the last. Ms. Raboteau's writing is deft, assured, and daring. I was transported throughout the reading and willingly went anywhere the prose took me--and it took me many places (from a train wreck to a lynching to a boarding school to Ethiopia to the bedside of a formerly vital loved one who has become a "vegetable" to a flying dream state and more). Really, the writing just sings and the themes of race and belonging and identity are as timely as they are timeless. A wonderful, wonderful book.

The Professor's Daughter is Emma Boudreaux, a young woman who is struggling with the loss of her older "spiritual twin" brother, Bernie (Bernard Boudreaux III), who dies after a brief coma following a freak accident. Emma has long been a victim of physical and emotional abandonment from her father, the world renowned Yale professor, Bernard Boudreaux II, but her brother's death seems to exacerbate her "condition" and pushes her over the edge.

Emma's "condition" is that of self-doubt originally stemming from her ethnicity (her father is African American, her mother Caucasian) and the struggles of trying to fit into a world that is largely black or white. She leans heavily on her brother as her strength during the early childhood years when she is taunted by other children. She becomes somewhat of a recluse, excelling academically while learning to "disappear" or become "invisible" in order to avoid the negative attention her physical appearance seems to attract. But this is not merely a tale of the tragic mulatto - it goes deeper - and Raboteau's beckoning style sets the tone perfectly.

There's an expression, "the fruit does not fall far from the tree," and although Emma was somewhat of an enigma, I found the professor's character more intriguing and complex. Within him lies inner struggles and conflict that were seemingly inherited by his son with residual turmoil passed to Emma. The professor is a brilliant man with violent and poor roots originating in the Mississippi Delta. He is very secretive and guarded about his family history. It is in his recollections that we learn he was orphaned at an early age by a traumatic event that led his mother to madness and his father to an untimely death. His journey from the poor house to the white tower is fraught with discrimination, abuse, humiliation, and loneliness. He blocks the memories of his painful childhood with disastrous results - his unresolved issues affect his life and children in a most profound manner.

The novel is partly narrated by Emma recapping her life in a series of recollections. She reminisces about past lovers, her childhood, her college years, her self-imposed sabbatical to Brazil - complete with all the drama, longing, misery, and heartbreak that come with searching for oneself and trying to uncover the "mystery" behind her grandfather's (Bernard I) passing. Raboteau takes interesting tangents along the way - cleverly supplementing the novel with Ethiopian and Sioux folklore that makes the story even more enchanting in an unconventional kind of way. I will admit that this novel is not for everyone; however, I enjoyed it from its opening passages. I found it to be perfectly paced and very well written.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub
The Nubian Circle Book Club

Emily Raboteau wrote a good story in Callaloo that I remember being sort of the same storyline as this, three of four years ago, and at the time I wrote down her name as a writer to watch out for. Here we get the whole nine yards. The novel has a sort of Willa Cather flavor to its title (remember THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE?), and Raboteau's combination of delicacy and broad strokes do call to mind a young Willa Cather. But other bodies of writing are part of Raboteau's project too. I think everyone who reads this marvelous novel will feel, like the blind man and the elephant, that she has grasped at least a good chunk of social and moral America that has never before been adequately described or taxonomized. "The Professor's Daughter" sounds like a bookish title too, and this isn't that imaginary book, but a novel of raw power like Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN or Richard Wright's THE LONG DREAM.

It is rather like Terms of Endearment written on a bigger scale, but with the same imaginative sympathy that Larry McMurtry brought to his suffering mother and daughter. Here Emma (even the same name as the character Debra Winger played in the film version of Terms) isn't the one in the hospital, no, here it is her brother Bernard, the brother she has idealized for so long as the strong one, the tentpole in the family, now in a coma, a helpless mass of silent body parts. From this deracinated body she must exercise all her powers of analysis to determine what happened to her brother, what happened to her family, and what happened to white and black people over the whole troubled course of American history.

The storyline travels in jumps through time, back into the past and then abruptly, into the present while Emma cogitates. Strange fragments of dreams take precedence from page to page over the ordinary privilege of narrative. And we get a fair amount about the Negro Leagues too, so you might want to brush up on Ken Burns' BASEBALL video.

...is how I would describe this book. Raboteau tells the story of a family, the Boudreauxs, through the eyes of its protagonist, Emma Boudreaux. It is a story of identity, but also family as provided with glimpses of the past and through the experiences of Emma's parents.

The novel begins with the relationship of Emma to her "twin brother," Bernie and progresses with the childhood stories of her father, her parents relationship, family friends etc.

Raboteau's descriptions are vivid, often beautiful. Her writing is delicate, yet candid.

The novel sometimes feels disjointed, even fragmented, but not in a bad way. It reads somewhat like a collection of linked short stories.

I wouldn't say the ending of the novel was abrupt, but I felt like there could have been more. I don't feel like we really know Emma, or that she even knows herself. I feel like the ending was very open-ended, at least for me.

I'd be interested in reading future works by this writer.

Some might say Bernie and Emma Boudreaux are as different as night and day, but according to Bernie, he and his sister make up two parts of a whole. Born to a white mother and black father, both children have trouble relating to either parent, but through it all they have each other. That is until Bernie is in a tragic accident that turns their family and particularly Emma's life upside down. As the story alternates between the present and both the recent and distant pasts, Emma's story as well as that of the entire Boudreaux family unfolds.

Professor Boudreaux is plagued by a past that leaves him with feelings of inadequacy in spite of his professional success. Through a series of flashbacks we learn about his childhood which is wrought with poverty, loneliness and pain. His early experiences are replayed in his adult life as he falls into the role of an emotionally distant father and husband. His son Bernie is a particular thorn in his side because he is always rejecting convention. Bernie has a learning disability that prevents him from being able to live up to his father's high standards and he is quite aware of his father's disappointment. Emma on the other hand, does well in school and is the "perfect little girl." She is often afraid to express her true feelings and much of her stress is expressed psychosomatically, through recurrent incurable rashes. Bernie often gives voice to much of what Emma is feeling, but after his accident she has to learn to make it on her own.

Through fine writing, excellent characterizations, and alternating points of view, THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER poignantly depicts the complicated nature of familial relationships and the unique bond many siblings share. The characters were complex, yet Raboteau presented them with a clarity that one would expect from a far more seasoned writer. She didn't tell who the characters were - she allowed them to come alive through her writing and speak for themselves. At the end of the story, I felt as if I knew the characters, and I understood and empathized with each of them. Raboteau's writing is a crisp and invited addition to contemporary literature. For those who love character driven stories, THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER will not disappoint.

Reviewed by Stacey Seay
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

This book being Emily Raboteau's debut is not bad at all. There are quite a number of signs/symbols in the story you should pay attention to. Perspective jumps from one to another, but not really difficult to follow. How the protagonist's brother got into a vegetative state is inappropriately comical, and it's not all that sarcastic either. One of the chapters is somewhat out of the blue and I can't really find a connection with the main plot. The last 1/3 of the book is somewhat pointless in my opinion. Comes off thought-provoking at first but really started dumbing down after 2/3 mark. Character development is somewhat interesting. Events unfold in a natural manner. Emily was able to make the readers visualize. Messages are fairly obvious (one is reminded at the end and another requires some deep thinking). Good read but not a must read.

On a side note, it is one of the few books I feel could be turned into a movie. Just sayin...

I haven't read this novel yet but just ordered it. Narrative Magazine selected an excerpt of the novel as their "Story of the Week." It absolutely deserves that honor. This author is incredible.