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Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do [Hardcover]

Pearl Cleage (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)

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Book Description

August 26, 2003
With the unique blend of truth and humor that made her first novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day . . ., a huge bestseller, Pearl Cleage returns with an extraordinary novel that is rich in character, steeped in sisterhood, and bursting with unexpected love . . . and maybe just a little magic.

Depending on the time of day, Regina Burns is a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown or an overdue breakthrough. One shattered heart and six months of rehab have left her wary and shell-shocked—especially with the prospect of taking a temporary consulting job in Atlanta, a move that would allow Regina to rescue the family home that she borrowed against when she was “a stomp down dope fiend.” Her stone-faced banker has grudgingly agreed to give her sixty days to settle her debts or lose the house.

Returning to Atlanta is a big risk. Last time Regina was there, she lost track of who she was and what she wanted. There’s a lot of emotional baggage with her new employer, Beth Davis. Can she really forgive Beth for breaking up her wedding plans on New Year’s Eve because she just didn’t think Regina was good enough to marry her son?

Meanwhile, Regina’s visionary Aunt Abbie has told her to be on the lookout for a handsome stranger with “the ocean in his eyes” who has a bone to pick and a promise to keep. Then a blue-eyed brother appears on the streets of Afro-Atlanta wearing a black cashmere overcoat, flashing a dazzling smile, and lending a helping hand when Regina needs it most. But between falling for Blue Hamilton and dealing with Beth, secrets will emerge that will threaten to send her life twisting in surprising new directions.

Like a conversation with a good friend, Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do shares hope, love, and laugher. As always, it is Pearl Cleage’s unforgettable characters and her gift for dialogue that will earn this provocative new novel a place in the hearts of her growing family of readers.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Past is prologue-literally-for a young African-American woman making a fresh start in Cleage's (What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day...) highly readable third novel. Just out of rehab and nearly bankrupt, 34-year-old Regina Burns receives a much-needed job offer from motivational speaker Beth Davis, a former employer. At 24, Regina went to work for Beth as a speechwriter and special assistant, helping Beth bring her message of empowerment to a growing national audience. The two women were accompanied by Beth's 20-something only child, known to all as Son. Regina fell in love with Son, but agreed to hide the romance from disapproving Beth. When they were discovered, Son broke up with Regina rather than upset his mother, driving Regina back home to D.C. and into a cocaine habit. Just as she is on the verge of losing everything, word of Son's death in New York on September 11 shocks Regina into rehab. When Beth decides to donate Son's papers to his alma mater, Morehouse College, she hires Regina to coordinate the project. Upon arriving in Atlanta, Regina runs into charismatic Blue Hamilton, an ex-singer who becomes her landlord. Blue wields an odd power over a peaceful city enclave bordered by threatening neighborhoods-and over Regina as well. As she works quickly to organize Son's papers, Regina must decide what to do with growing evidence of a secret life he kept hidden from Beth. At the same time Regina fears for Blue's safety when neighborhood tensions begin to escalate. The novel takes a creative path to a predictable ending, neatly resolving several plot lines. Regina is a delightful narrator: frank, self-aware and keenly observant. Cleage stumbles with the story's brief detour into the supernatural, but this distracting misstep only slightly diminishes the story's appeal.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Regina Burns, recovering from cocaine addiction and on the verge of losing her family home, reluctantly takes a temporary assignment in Atlanta. Her job: to oversee a memorial to Son Davis, the man she would have married if she could have wrested him from the grip of an overprotective mother, Regina's former and now current employer. Can she put herself back in the powerful orbit of Beth Davis? Can she help deify the image of her former fiance, even knowing his frailties? Her aunt Abbie, bolstered by a vision she's had, assures Regina that she will more than succeed in her assignment. In fact, according to Aunt Abbie, Regina will meet her soulmate (a black man with blue eyes, whom she loved in a previous life), rescue a damsel in distress, and slay a dragon. With that tall order, Regina sets off for Atlanta and meets a blue-eyed former singer who has managed to create a utopia in a troubled urban neighborhood, a place with no crime, strong men, creative women, and blooming gardens. Cleage combines her usual strong social consciousness, delicious character development, and evocative portrayal of black neighborhoods in a novel about love across the ages and foibles of public figures. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: One World/Ballantine (August 26, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0345456068
  • ISBN-13: 978-0345456069
  • Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #202,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

47 Reviews
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 (9)
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (47 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Atlanta native, January 26, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do (Hardcover)
The best part of the book are all the references in it to Atlanta places and the West End. It was fun to read about all the places in and around the West End, if you grew up in the ATL. The book overall was a bit disappointing. Not what I thought it would be as I read through chapter after chapter. The ending was okay, but left you feeling a bit "flat" and did not end as I expected. This was not what I expected for a Peal C book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars So-So........, July 8, 2004
By 
Big Cleage fan, but this one didn't "hold me hostage" like the others. I kept waiting for something to happen, but by the end of of the book, it was pretty boring. It was almost fairy-tale-ish with the visionary aunt (fairy godmother), then everything falling so neatly into place with the whole Blue Hamilton thing. I guess I can assume that he "knocked off" anyone who didn't "act right" within the bounds of his territory. Still kinda lost @ how the whole "he's been searching for you across time" thing works, but maybe it was just me.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A socially responsible romance novel, October 4, 2006
By 
I had a chance to listen to Cleage's novel as an audio book, so I was a bit of a captive audience. The Morehouse Man in me enjoyed experiencing a story set in West End Atlanta and listening to travelog descriptions of stores and land marks that I remembered. The setting does become a kind of character in and of itself and provides a short hand method of characterization for Cleage, in that characters that are educated and community minded reside in West End, while those characters that deal in flesh and violence and pain inhabit Stewart Ave.

I like the social consciousness of the book. R&B singer and enforcer of Black manhood Blue Hamilton creates a West End where women can walk securely after dark and pimps, pushers, and abusers are afraid to transgress. Cleage's characters are aware of their culture and communal obligations as Black people. Her West End is a kind of Duboisian Black Utopia in which the Talented Tenth actually share the fruits of success.

At the same time, it's hard to mix social consciousness, prophetic dreams, and romance. In Cleage's book the three don't exactly blend well. In truth, the book isn't all that romantic. Now, I'll confess that's fine with me, as I'm not a fan of romance stories posing as literature anyway. Black sections in bookstores are already overfilled with disposable gossip novels. Cleage promises a romance story, but the prophecies and predestination create a build up that the actual courtship of Regina and Blue doesn't live up to. Their relationship seems too easy and sudden, even taking into account past lives and reincarnation.

I think Cleage finds herself in an awkward position as a writer. As a Spelman College professor and the daughter of the founder of a Black Revolutionary Christian church, the Shrine of the Black Madonna, Pearl Cleage has serious motivations and a desire to make her readers, especially her Black readers, think. But she's limited by the confines of the romance genre, which usually seeks more heartbeats than revolutionary heroism.

Pearl Cleage's more serious aims might better fit more serious literature.
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First Sentence:
I HAVE REALLY SCREWED UP NOW. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
growers meeting
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Blue Hamilton, Precious Hargrove, King James, West End, Son Davis, Beth Davis, Club Zebra, Regina Burns, Senator Hargrove, Son Shine, Bob Marley, Miss Mattie, Stewart Avenue, Miss Ross, Daddy Blue, New York Times, Royal Peacock, Sister Davis, San Francisco, Tybee Island
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