Customer Reviews

Trading Dreams at Midnight: A Novel

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I have read all of Diane McKinney-Whetstone's books, so I am quite familiar with her work and style and consider myself a fan (see my Amazon review of Leaving Cecil Street). So much of a fan that I blindly pre-ordered her new book long before a book description was available on Amazon.com or it was offered via the Vine program. Nonetheless, after I finally read the synopsis, my interest was piqued and I eagerly cracked the cover to meet Nan, her daughter (Freeda), and Freeda's children (Neena and Tish).

Familial dysfunction is at the core of the novel commingled within the tumultuous mother/daughter relationships rooted in Freeda's battles with mental illness that causes her to wander between emotional highs and lows and in and out of her daughter's lives. Freeda leaves a hole in Neena's heart when she disappears on Neena's sixteenth birthday and is not heard from again. We meet Neena at age 36 returning to Philadelphia fresh from a failed con job that leaves her homeless and virtually penniless. The reader is promptly and continually subjected to Nan and Neena's countless flashback sequences (which were at times extremely elongated and a bit dull) to gain an understanding of what occurred between "then" to arrive at "now" some twenty years later. Sadly, as much as the author delivered with the descriptive scenes of Philadelphia, reflections of a beloved bygone era, clever infusions of music and color, and even a smattering of social and political nuggets, it failed to endear me to the characters or plot. I kept waiting for something to happen, some conflict (not just reflections on Neena and Nan's inner turmoil), but for something to "pop," some build to a climax, and it never materialized. Even secondary characters like Tish, Freeda, Alfred, etc. seemed like mere afterthoughts which failed to develop fully or resonate with the reader.

Honestly I struggled to finish this book. While I was tempted to skim or skip passages, I did not. It is a book club selection and I am obligated to provide a review for the Amazon Vine program, so I wanted to be able to discuss it intelligently in its entirety and provide a fair review. So while I can equate some passages to a trek through knee-deep mud (or a cure for insomnia), I plodded my way through the novel and after four days, I finally finished it and it felt like hard labor to do so. It is recommended to die-hard fans of the author who want to visit her latest body of work to complete their collection; however, newcomers may want to pick up previous works before reading this one as it is not representative of her greatness.

Reviewed by Phyllis
Nubian Circle Book Club

For more than twenty years, Neena has been searching for her absent, mentally ill mother, Freeda. Freeda's last appearance is the night of her sixteenth birthday when she climbed into the window of her daughters' bedroom where they live with her mother, Nan. Nan is a stern but loving grandmother to Tish and Neena. Over the years, she takes them in when Freeda's wandering mind takes her on a journey, abandoning her young daughters to fend for selves. Yet, whenever she returns, Neena is happy and can't get past her yearnings for her mother's love that she knew as a little girl. Tish longs for stability, often frightened, afraid and prefers the security of her grandmother's care.

Nan knows this and it causes a huge divide between the two of them. She never seems to be able to love Neena, the rebellious grandchild, the way that she loves Tish, the agreeable one. Neena feels she can never do right in her grandmother's eyes. She is Freeda's girl and Nan, who never forgave herself for not being able to save Freeda from her demons, sees all that she has lost in Freeda, in Neena.

In her recently released novel, Trading Dreams At Midnight, acclaimed author Diane McKinney-Whetstone brings us a hauntingly beautiful story of mothers and daughters, love and pain. The author threads issues of mental illness, alcoholism, broken marriages, prejudice, racism, and neighborhood gentrification throughout her novel. Although at times soft, it is still a hard-hitting, bittersweet novel about a family of black women who stand tough as times get tougher.

Nan also has demons to live with. As a young, lonely, single woman, Nan is so taken by the handsome, sweet talking Albert that she resorts to less than honorable ways to trap him. A working alcoholic in bad health, Alfred is more than a handful but Nan loves him enough to stand by him. After Freeda's birth, Alfred is in and out of sobriety over the years yet they manage to stay together as a family. Freeda is a Daddy's girl and the apple of his eye. Nan thought that all of her dreams had come true. As Freeda gets older, however, Nan sees that her sweet child is less than perfect. For years, Nan refuses to face the realities of her daughter's dark side. Then as a rude awakening, Nan believes that her sins are re-visited in her child. When the marriage falls apart, so does Freeda. It becomes clear that she has mental problems but Nan's help comes too late. When Freeda gives birth to Neena and Tish, Nan sets out to save the girls, hoping that her grandchildren will elude the fate that befell their mother.

Unlike Tish, Neena cannot stop longing for her mother. She drops out of college and leaves Philadelphia for Cleveland, the last place that Freeda had been spotted. Neena finds herself forced to run scams against her married lovers in order to support her search and to live the good life. Finding herself in danger after one of her scams goes bad, she returns to Philadelphia with only the clothes on her back and plans to stay with Tish until she can get on her feet again.
Tish is now happily married and doing very well as a local television anchorwoman. There is a problem, however; Tish is in the hospital threatening a miscarriage of her fetus.

Neena is broke, scared and desperate. She cannot depend on Tish or face her grandmother who she ran away from long ago. She is frightened that she really cannot come back home.

How McKinney-Whetstone brings Tish, Nan and Neena together is rich in emotion and beauty and not to be missed.

McKinney-Whetstone's lyrical prose is her trademark. Her secondary characters are just as carefully drawn as her main characters and help carry the story. Her description of Philadelphia in the late 1990s is most familiar to this reviewer who grew up in the City of Brotherly Love.

The author writes novels that never need a sequel. They are so complete you know that all is well with the characters that you have come to love. This latest offering is no different. Her loyal readers will not be disappointed. Dianne McKinney-Whetstone pens yet another African American literary classic.

[...]

In some respects TRADING DREAMS AT MIDNIGHT is a remarkable novel: author Diane McKinney-Whetstone has a very, very distinct tone of voice and the gift of narrative poetry. Unfortunately, in this instance one must weigh that gift against a somewhat uninspired story of good mother-bad daughter and good sister-bad sister.

The novel shifts primarily between Nan, an aging grandmother, and Neena, her wayward granddaughter--both of them obsessed in their different ways with the disappearance of Freeda, Nan's daughter and Neena's mother. The story itself begins with Freeda, always a bit unstable, and on this occasion particularly so; it then moves forward and backward in time to tell the story of her mother and her two daughters as they attempt to make peace with Freeda's dark legacy and apparent determination to vanish entirely from their lives.

Nan, the grandmother, is a strong and very believeable character; Freeda, however, seems facile. I never quite believed in her, and that sense of disbelief grew as the novel progressed, undercutting the narrative as a whole. I also found the unraveling of the plot somewhat anti-climatic. Nonetheless, I continued to read simply for the pleasure of the author's narrative tone. She has a beautiful voice. I just wish it had been more wisely applied.

--GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Trading Dreams at Midnight by Diane McKinney-Whetstone is a full frontal view of the dynamics of female, family relationships. The family is headed by matriarch, Nan. Nan has spent her life as a stern, disciplined, churchgoing woman, who always lived by the rules. The one time she decides to step outside of character is when she gets a peak at the handsome Alfred. She will do anything and will stop at nothing to have him. What she does not know at the outset is that how she got Alfred will haunt her for the rest of her life. To the union is born, Alfreeda, known as Freeda. Immediately, the reader can see that Freeda is a special young woman prone to emotional extravagance, which manifests itself in mood swings and disappearances.

Freeda gives birth to two girls, Neena and Tish, and though she loves her girls, when she feels dark inside she takes off, leaving the girls in the care of Nan. These disappearing acts affect the girls in different ways. Tish cleaves to Nan, becoming a young woman who lives by the rules. However, Neena is mother focused and spends her life in pursuit of Freeda, bucking Nan's authority at every turn. Neena becomes particularly obsessed with her mother after Freeda's final disappearance when Neena is a teenager and she spends many years on the hunt for Freeda. Neena leads a gypsy existence, existing solely on her feminine wiles. Tish on the other hand stays close to home, marrying and becoming a successful news anchor. One thing that separation cannot change is the loving bond between the sisters.

Trading Dreams at Midnight is told in flashback sequences, mostly through the eyes of Neena. At times I was entranced by the memories and at other times I wanted more current day. Having said that I loved how the author allowed us to see the dynamics of female kin at play and how she skillfully wove the peripheral characters into the fabric of the story. Ms. McKinney-Whetstone is a wonderful storyteller.

Angelia Menchan
APOOO BookClub

Unfortunately, I found this book boring and meandering. The main character, Neena, has weaknesses of resolution and ability that cause her to fritter many of her years in what amount to extortionate relationships with affluent men.

The book does have some merit, in revealing a variety of black experiences in the US. Especially over the passage of decades. Showing contentions with the broader (white) society against a backdrop of cultural changes. There is a range of black characters, from struggling working class people to successful and prosperous lawyers, that give the reader an appreciation for the complexities of a broad community.

But against this, I found the plot to be disjointed and not much of anything. A stream of consciousness flow that repeatedly jumps decades in viewpoints. All of which might have been tolerable if the central thread held more allure.

This was an amazing story of a 3 generations of women bound by pain and love for one another.
The Grandmother who raised her 2 granddaughters when their mother suddenly disappeared. Skip ahead twenty years, and now the oldest of the two girls has been living a life she is not proud of, returns home to see her sister who is hospitalized, and has to face the grandmother she knows will disapprove of her current lifestyle.
This story was so moving that I had to keep a box of kleenex nearby!

While not a novel I would ordinarily have picked up for myself, I found that I liked "Trading Dreams at Midnight" - despite the many superfluous descriptors added at times.

This is a story about three generations of women, the choices they make (good and bad) and how they survive with them. Nan has used what she considers to be black magic to make sure she gets the man she wants, and feels that this resulted in the mental illness of her daughter Freeda - who suffers from severe bi-polar disorder. Freeda's two daughters - Neena and Tish - who are more or less raised by their grandmother between return visits of their mother, survive their abandonment in different ways. Neena idolizes her mother and refuses to see any bad in her, while Tish hates her mother and prefers the company of Nan, the Church and the community in which they live.

Coming to difficult decisions about themselves, these women grow and change through time. This is a book that will be enjoyed by anyone who likes to read realistic depictions of life, and women's studies, etc. I can recommend it for any woman to read.

Although Trading Dreams at Midnight is a novel, it is written much like a biography of an African American family living, for the most part, in today's Philadelphia. The first part of the story tells of the family matriarch, Nan. When young she married her one love, Alfred, who was far from perfect, but Nan hung on to him for life. After all - he was the father of their beautiful baby daughter, Freeda.

Freeda's story is told, then the story of her two daughters, Neena and Tish.

Author Diane McKinney-Whetstone writes a comfortable read. By comfortable, I mean the setting is Middle America. The novel held my interest because it is genuine. The happenings of the family members are sometimes unusual - sometimes shocking, but realistic. Most of the time the events that take place could just as easily takes place in any home in any town.

I liked the characters, could identify with them in one way or another, and most importantly - I cared about what happened to them. Each character has a definite personality and McKinney-Whetstone reveals these true-to-life personalities a little at a time. Each insight is true to the character.

The characters Freeda and her daughter, Neena, interested me most. Both have problems and cope with their difficulties in their own way. It is interesting to see why and how problems can follow a family generation after generation, and how one child can react with anger and regret while another child can prosper and be successful - while both were raised in the same home. I felt McKinney-Whetstone's insight was accurate and although a novel, Trading Dreams at Midnight was probably more accurate with her assumptions about family problems than not.

This book is a fast read because it holds the reader's interest. It is a good read because the story is engaging. It is a worthwhile read because it does, indeed, teach some of life's lessons.

I can recommend this book and feel readers will not be dissapointed.

I am an avid fan of Mckinney-Whetstone's work and I have to say she has written another gem that truly hits the mark. Though quite different from her other novels this book takes an introspective look at the intense and complicated relationships between daughters and mothers -- or mother figures. In Trading Dreams at Midnight, she uncovers truths about the sometimes tenuous nature of family bonds that anyone can relate to. The most intense relationship is the one between Neena and her grandmother Nan. Nan's rigid Christian sensibilities clash violently with Neena's need for independence and self discovery. The two have a difficult time even trying to understand eachother and yet as people they are shaped and propelled forward by the same traumatic event, the dissapearance of Freeda, Nan's daugter and Neena's mother. Nan chooses to move on and Neena chooses to leave her home town in search of her mother. The common loss that these two face and the stark differences with wich they handle it is very poignant.

I also cannot say enough about the author's prose. It is fluid and vivid as ever, drawing you into the world of the characters and their motivations in such a way that keeps you fully engrossed in the story from beginning to end. I truely wanted to keep reading after the last page! In a time when smutty or silly fiction gets so much attention it is refreshing to read a book from an author who is so carefuly crafting her work, telling honest African American stories with complex characters and real voices.

Fantastic book, fantastic author... I would reccomend Trading Dreams at Midnight to anyone who enjoys great fiction.

Trading Dreams at Midnight is a surprisingly inspired read following a family of three women, in America. The struggles and challenged that life brings each of the women is heart grabbing and compelling. Furthermore, the story tells of the challenges and touches on the very differences that all families face as truly every family and each member of a family is so very different, while sharing similarities as well.

How do they get along? Do they love each other? What will the future bring? Trading Dreams at Midnight kept me asking these questions and thinking back and reflecting on this story regularly afterwards. Powerful.