Customer Reviews

River, Cross My Heart: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(31)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I felt this book needed more of a plot...some kind of resolution, something to let the reader know that this was not just some train-of-thought mumbo jumbo. Something! Something more!

What I did appreciate about this book was the way in which Clarke dealt with racism. I especially liked the questions that young Johnnie Mae kept asking when confronted with such blatant examples of inequality. It seemed like Johnnie Mae was asking herself the same questions that blacks must ask themselves today when confronted with such a hateful thing as racism. The fact that Johnnie Mae was relentless in her questioning put her at odds with the older, more experienced blacks, many of whom had almost resigned themselves to their place, it seems, until Johnnie Mae infuses them with hope at her swimming competition.

I liked Johnnie Mae's sense of self worth and bravery. I thought the interactions between Johnnie Mae and Pearl were funny and touching; although there were too few of them to make up for the book's shortcomings.

I think the author should re-write this book and concentrate more on the rest of Johnnie Mae and the other Bynums' lives.

Personally, I would have liked to see Johnnie Mae go to Howard University, like her swimming coach, or fall in love and marry Charlie. Aside from Johnnie Mae, Calvin was ripe with possibilities.

Some people like to read. Some people like to think. And some people like to do both. River, Cross My Heart is a book that makes you think as you read. It is a touching story about a black family living in the south in the early 1900s. The family faces racism every day. The black children are not allowed in the town's white pool, and one day Clara, a black girl, drowns when she goes to a nearby river. The novel deals with Clara's sister, Johnnie Mae, and her emotions in dealing with death and racism. The book really makes you think. If Clara would have been allowed to swim in the town pool, she never would have drowned. I kept thinking this over and over in my head. Racism indirectly killed an innocent child. I loved how the book took me back to the times of when it took place. I felt the racsim in the book and related to the black characters in the story. The author, Breena Clarke, does a great job of letting the reader relate to the characters. I really felt like I knew Johnnie Mae. I fell in love with Johnnie's character right away. This girl is so strong-willed and brave. My favorite part of the book is when Johnnie Mae sneaks into the white pool one night to overcome her desire to beat racism. Johnnie is so courageous to do this. The way the author describes Johnnie helps the reader to really know her, predict her actions, and admire her. For those of you reading this review, get the book-that is, if you want to think about what you are reading. You could read the novel as a light story for pleasure, but you really should go in depth with your thinking. This book deals with serious subjects like death and racism-subjects everyone needs to be exposed to. Anyone can read River, Cross My Heart. But I reccommend it to those who will really think-about Johnnie Mae, about the river, about racism, about death---about life. This novel is enjoyable and well-written. Give it a chance. Dive into River, Cross My Heart!

Breena Clarke's first novel is like a broken rubber band gradually stretched by fingers that aren't aware of the possible sting that may eventuate if it breaks further or if it is let go. It starts off so slowly that one wonders where it may be headed and then it starts to gather momentum until it totally shifts and finishes about 358 degrees from where it started. What makes it work I think is that the characters develop. We see our young heroine mature and grow amongst the many people around her. Perhaps there are too many. I constantly had to reread sections to try and remember who people were but I found in the end the relationship that existed between our heroines - Johnnie Mae and Pearl - entirely satisfying. It wanders and at times mimics - poorly - Toni Morrison, but Clarke's work here is promising enough to warrant a reading of any further work she may produce.

I have been reading this short novel every night for the past week and I am only half way through it. I am very close to placing it on the booshelf unfinished. I find the book to be a jumble of words with no direction or focus. I think Oprah struck out with this one.

I have read River Cross My Heart, a novel by Breena Clarke.It is two-hundred and forty-five pages of heart renching brilliance. The novel's main characters include; Alice, Willie, Johnnie Mae, and baby Clara. The whole Bynum family displayed in there all but too human emotional rollercoasters. This book takes you inside the heartache and long healing process of a family after the worst devastation a family could have, losing a loved one. This takes place in the early 1930's in Georgetown,in Washington D.C. . This book gives you the knowlege of what it takes for someone to gain courage, control of their life, and to find the key inside themselves to gain all this. The best qoute in this book is,"For a few moments, she had been a woman-nearly-a grown woman like all the others."Pg95 The cover is a wonderful foreshadow of what you are about to read. A great significance in the novel, signifying the Potomac river. The title is an emotional feeling of one of the main characters Johnnie Mae. She feels that the Potomac river will always be in her heart since it played a role in her life that she will never forget. She will always have the memories. This book has become a new favorite of mine. The structure and theme made it exceptionally good. I would reccomend this book to anyone who likes reading about the younger times of America and also the wonderful insight on human behavior.

I wanted to like this book. The subject matter and time period are of interest to me and usually make fine fodder for fiction. It seems as if the book cannot decide what it wants to be. The reader has only a nodding aquaintance with the characters, and by the end of the book must find some reason to care about what happens to them. That is a shame. Some of the characters are so interesting. I'd like to see how they are all woven together into the fabric of the town and story. Some of the passages, particularly those involving the spirit of the drowned girl, approach a kind of magical realism that is so beautiful, but their connection to the broader story is hard to make. I'm anxious to read the author's next book to see how her writing style evolves.

This story had such potential, but the author went nowhere with it. The story was supposed to be about how the accidental drowning of a child affected the rest of her family, especially Johnnie Mae, who was responsible for the child when the accident happened. After the first chapters, it was like Clara's death didn't affect the family at all. It was just life as usual until much later in the book when Johnnie Mae returns to the scene of the drowning. This is the first hint that she even thought about the accident. I was disappointed in the progression of the book, but I understood it a little better after I learned some of the history of the author, whose own child died. I can understand wanting to write about an event without writing about it directly, but this book needed a little more direction and a lot more plot development. It's not a book that will stick in your memory for very long.

A most disappointing read, this book is not what it purports to be: "the effects of a young girl's tragic death on the people she left behind." In fact, one can't quite discern exactly what the book is about (or what it wants to be). All in all, I am inclined to think that Ms. Clarke was in a schizophrenic frame of mind when she wrote this book. It's fragmented, disjointed, and all over the place. One does not have to be an adept literary critic to see the shortcomings in this book: meaningless subplots, random events, underdeveloped characters, no focus. In all, a jigsaw puzzle with one too many pieces missing. And all this is too bad as this book has terrific potential. Ms. Clarke is a good writer and one does get some insight into black Georgetown of the 1920s. But even that is not in any great depth. A more appropriate name for the book would have been: "A brief look at lots of black folks & Johnnie Mae's fondness for swimming."

This book was just good enough to keep me reading to the end. Several times I considered moving on to something more rewarding, but the subject of life among African-Americans in segregated Georgetown (Washington, DC) in the 1920s is such an interesting one that I kept waiting for this book to fulfill its promise.

There's just no plot here. The book's focal point, the drowning of a young girl in the Potomac, happens right at the beginning. Then, people come to town, talk with each other, go to school, have babies..... this could be taking place anywhere. The characters don't have distinct voices. Possibly the most interesting character is Ella, who does country medicine, but we never find out anything about her as a person other than that she has a stilted way of speaking and an odd smell.

I've probably read a dozen of the Oprah Book Club books and this is the first time that one has so utterly failed to carry me away. Ah, well. Has to happen some time.

A no-go, girl. It isn't that the book is bad, it just is undeserving of the attention you have given it. The prose is sloppy, the characters undeveloped, and the imagery is just not there. The idea is great, it just needs a few more edits. The only character I felt anything for was the poor kitten. I'm disappointed, I expected more from your book club. Hope you do better next time.