Some Things I Never Thought Id Do [Paperback]

Pearl Cleage (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: One World/Ballantine (2003)
• ASIN: B000OVMQWK
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So-So........, July 8, 2004

By 

T. Kenard (Canton, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do (April GMA Selection) (Paperback)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A socially responsible romance novel, October 4, 2006

By 

Arthur Camara (Waukegan, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

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.