Amazon.com Review
What happens when Anthony "Ant" Poole, a consummate player, meets the woman who makes fast, easy sex seem like a waste of time? In
Sweet St. Louis, Omar Tyree explores the emotional differences between black men and women, and traces the rocky path to true love. 24-year-old Sharron Francis is looking for a man who'll talk with her, answer the hard questions, and stick around. She's on a mission, "not to play hard to get, but hard to forget," and she'll give that heartbreaker Ant just a few chances before she moves on. But Ant has so much to learn. At least he has a solid job as a mechanic, buoyant self-esteem, and enough experience with women to recognize that Sharron--good-looking, thoughtful, and down-to-earth--might be "the one." Ant's best friend, Tone, teases him into confessing how deep his feelings for Sharron run, while her roommate, Celena, a player in her own right, keeps warning her away from him, arguing that Ant can never change his ways. Through long conversations, the lovers challenge and provoke each other. Yet just as they feel ready to move in together, Ant calls her from jail, swearing he's innocent. Will Sharron abandon him? Can he blame her if she does? He knows she "had the heart of the old school, to love a man to her death. And the steel of the new school to ask him everything about their future together without flinching, to do away with the destructiveness of assumptions."
A journalist and lecturer, Tyree sometimes generalizes too much about the sexes. He also relies on overly long, relaxed dialogue that can sometimes read like the transcript of an excruciating blind date. But Ant and Sharron are depicted as ordinary, multi-dimensional people who are full of contradictions. They try to balance hope with experience, and eventually they find the courage to grow together. --Regina Marler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
"Hey, miss?... You wanna make a trade with me?... A piece of me for a piece of you." Anthony "Ant" Poole, a young African-American auto mechanic, believes he has a flair for pick-up lines in this overblown but lively romance by Tyree (Fly Girl). Against the hectic contemporary urban backdrop of St. Louis, Ant competes with his best friend, small-time criminal Anthony "Tone" Wallace, for dates. His days as a carefree Romeo are numbered, however, when he meets old-fashioned girl Sharron Francis, an airline caterer, who is trying to end an affair with a married man. Even Celena, Sharron's man-eating best friend, is jealous of Sharron's budding romance. Though Tyree relies on stereotypes and his prose is studded with distracting italics, his charting of his characters' inner motives is on target when he gets past surface description. The novel works best when the characters are one-on-one, deep in the lengthy conversations that fuel the narrative. Much as Ant bemoans the difficulties of dating a "thinking woman," he soon finds himself turning into a thinking man. Or as he says to Sharron's father: "Your daughter made me express myself." Still, even after Sharron rejects an old flame in favor of her new love, the commitment-phobic Ant can't quite give up his hunt for new conquests. It is finally a chastisement from one of his victims and a sobering night in jail that cause him to see the error of his ways. Tyree's checkered but entertaining street romance is a raucous cautionary tale steeped in the impulsiveness, verve and arrogance of youth. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
