Customer Reviews

The Untelling

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Tayari Jones tells a poignant tale of love and loss in her sophomore novel, THE UNTELLING. Its theme revolves around the "lie" that the dogwood tree is stunted and gnarled because its wood was used to construct Jesus' cross.

The telling of lies and the keeping of secrets has twisted something inside the women of the Jackson family. Aria believes she is pregnant and is overjoyed and ready to begin a new phase in her life. Regrettably, unforeseen circumstances cause her to tell a painful lie that is bound to be uncovered. Eloise has constantly preached to her daughters the necessity of living a responsible life, but has kept a secret for many years that has warped her maternal perspective. Hermione is the lone voice of reason calling out to her mother and sister in the wilderness, desperately trying to impart a semblance of reality. But neither is willing to sacrifice her artificial existence, so Hermione has semi-alienated herself from the family.

Comfortable, and at the same time, literary, THE UNTELLING is a story that will touch the emotions of mothers and daughters who have struggled in a timeless quest for mutual validation. Tayari Jones has done an excellent job of characterization, from Cynthia, the neighborhood crackhead in pursuit of a lost "rock" among the gravel in Aria's driveway, to Keisha, the pregnant teen struggling to get a GED so she can get a job anywhere besides Subway. This novel is big on the literary side, and more thought-provoking than exciting. Literary lovers will revel in the angst and introspection Jones offers and eagerly await her next work.

Reviewed by Kim Anderson Ray
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

THE UNTELLING by Tayari Jones
August 12, 2005

Amazon rating 4/5 stars

In the UNTELLING by Tayari Jones, a tragic accident takes the life of a father and his infant daughter. At the time, Aria Jackson was 9 years old. Besides Aria, her mother and her sister Hermione were also in the car. The story is told by Aria (Ariadne), and the reader will see how the accident shapes their lives.

Now an adult, Aria is involved with a man that she hopes will become her husband. She's 25 and still feels the scars of the accident. It affects her attitude and her views of the world. She feels that life never goes the way she wants, and envies everyone else around her, including her best friend Rochelle, who was adopted into a very wealthy African American family. Aria thinks her own life may be turning around for the better with her boyfriend Dwayne, until she finds that she's pregnant.

This book worked on various levels. It's the story of Aria and her viewpoint of the accident versus what really happened. But the book also was about the many relationships that Aria had with those around her, especially with her mother and her sister, both of whom were also in that same accident. One will sense that Aria had a lot of growing up to do, as she was constantly feeling sorry for herself, while her sister went away and made a life for herself, marrying their father's best friend. Aria lives in the bad side of town with her best friend, despite the fact that Rochelle has her family's financial support - they could have lived in a much better neighborhood. I found that Aria always found ways to put herself in situations that would make her feel sorry for herself, in some ways attracting attention from others because of the life she led. But in other ways I liked Aria. She was willing to learn and grow. She learns a valuable lesson with her relationship with Dwayne, the result of which leads the reader to the end of the story.

I hope to read more by Tayari Jones. She has a way with words - the book was short, but yet she packed in a lot of living in these 300 or so pages. A very fast read, but definitely not a fluff read. THE UNTELLING had a lot of depth to its story telling, and I enjoyed it a lot.

What happens when we keep secrets from our family and friends? This is the question that is explored in The Untelling by Tayari Jones. Aria Jackson's life was dramatically changed after the tragic car accident which killed her father and baby sister. After the accident, Aria and her older sister, Hermione struggled to stay afloat in the same house with their mother who was an emotional wreck. Now on her own, Aria has carved out a comfortable life for herself working at a literacy center, sharing a house with her best friend, and a relationship with a reliable man who she loves, Dwayne. Just when things seem to be going smoothly, Aria receives some devastating news. Should she keep this information to herself or tell the secret that could push away the person that she loves?

The Untelling deals with many different relationship issues between family, friends and lovers. Just like in Leaving Atlanta, Jones has a knack for creating main characters to whom I can relate even when we do not share the same experiences. Aria's "secret" is a topic that is not typically discussed in African American communities. Through my book club's discussion, I was shocked to learn that it is more prevalent than I thought. This novel also addresses the issues of the gentrification of neighborhoods across the United States. In making the areas nicer, the long time residents were forced to find somewhere else to live.

This novel is an excellent selection for book clubs because of the many issues, family and community it deals with. I know I personally was enlightened by the discussions my book club had regarding this book. I look forward to the next release by Jones.

Reviewed by Nicole
APOOO BookClub

Our lives are the sum of what we do and what has been done to us. It is the aggregate record of these actions that build our character, our memories, and others' memories of us. And how often do we wish our doings and others' could be undone? And isn't it this hope that keeps us, so often, silent about the wrong turns that make us who we are?

The Untelling, a haunting and at just the right times humorous second novel by Tayari Jones (author of the simultaneously celebratory and mournful Leaving Atlanta), sets as its central tension a tremendous fib. Or is what's at the core of the trouble recorded here a terrible accident? Or sweet but worrying love? Or a floundering mother? Or the lopsided affections of friendship and sisterhood? Or a neighborhood tottering between squalor, hominess, and detached gentrification? Or...,or..., or.... One of the many things Jones does well in this novel is route us through the tangled courses that are the complicated reality of a fully lived life. To reduce the root of the main character's trouble to the catastrophe of her youth or to the catastrophe that grips her body and her relationship in the time in which the novel is set would be too easy. And Jones has no intention of letting anybody off the hook.

Jones' exacting and expansive vision makes her characters so real that I find myself, while locking my bedroom door, for instance, or while watching people carving pumpkins, thinking of something that once happened to someone I knew. On both the large and small scale, the book's details are so vivid and ring so true that often I find myself thinking this way. "Who did that happen to?" I ask myself. "Where did I meet her? Where does she live?" Oh yes, that's right. She lives in The Untelling.

The Untelling, Tayari Jones' second novel, is a beautifully written and deeply compelling story. A powerful back story strengthens the present storyline and told in prose that is at the same time brave and elegant. Jones successfully carries us through the emotional journey of well-developed characters as they explore the painful territory of truth and the healing landscape of forgiveness.

Aria is no stranger to tragedy. Fifteen years earlier, while on the way to a dance recital, a horrible car accident took the lives of her father and baby sister. The remaining members of this broken family were left, struggling to live with the pain and guilt of being left behind. This is seen throughout every aspect of Aria's present day life. At 25, Aria is unsure about life. Her work as a literacy instructor is fulfilling, but she cannot seem to build the emotional attachments that are needed to sustain a courtship and start a family--until she meets Dwayne. She believes she can reinvent herself through her planned marriage and the promise of a family of her own. When a possible pregnancy segues to the tumultuous reality of infertility, Aria's life is turned upside down and threatens to destroy her relationship.

Read this, and if you haven't already, pick up Leaving Atlanta. You'll be inspired as both novels are full of strong yet sensitive characters that make you want to invite them over for Sunday dinner.


Nikki Woods, Reviewer
Literary Essence

The prologue of this deeply affecting novel took my breath away. There is a quiet brilliance throughout this story of loyalty, of trust, of shame. Tayari Jones writes with such humanity, with insight, with intelligence, and yet this is a writer who isn't trying to impress, but rather to remain true to her characters and their struggles. Somehow, too, Jones is able to bring a kind of humour to even the most dire of circumstances (not an easy trick) and I particularly enjoyed Aria's mother's intermittent declarations. A wonderful novel.

Tayari Jones gives us a narrative about a young woman named Aria Jackson whose life is turned around when her father and baby sister are killed in a car accident and Aria is forced to grow up quickly. Her mother and sister both become distant after the accident and Aria feels like she is living alone in the world. She tries to carve out a decent life for herself by teaching literacy to teenage girls and continuing to live with her newly-engaged best friend. When Aria finds out that she may be pregnant by her longtime boyfriend, she finally thinks that she will have the family that she always wanted. But there is a secret that could destroy her relationship and everything she had hoped for. Tayari Jones creates vivid characters that leap off the page. When reading The Untelling, I felt like I was walking down the same inner-city neighborhood as Aria. Jones' writing style puts you in the mind of Bernice McFadden. And with a wonderful novel like The Untelling, she's well on her way to becoming a critically-acclaimed author herself.

-Radiah Hubbert

Urban-Reviews.com

Here we have a tale about telling the truth and dealing with the consequences of not telling the truth. Ms. Jones' writing earns her the stars for this book, the story however does not. I was not incredibly moved by the story and as one reviewer put it, Aria came across as petty and immature and I simply did not care for her at all. I love my girlfiends dearly, but I would never obsessed over any of them. Aria's obsession with her girlfriend was disturbing. The girl in some ways even stalked her in the beginning. And after all that she becomes self-righteous and turns her back on her 'friend' when she thought she was a druggie, but yet later in life she would chose to live and even justified living in a drug-infected neighborhood. That made no sense to me no matter how I tried to justify it in my own mind. The author tried to justify it with the promise of gentrification, but for me it was too contradictory.

I was annoyed by the way she spoke to and treated people. She never really gave anyone a chance to like her because she kept everyone out by not letting them in and this is from the very beginning, even before the accident and this is a behavior that is never reconciled in the story. She's a young woman afraid to tell the truth, even when the truth was good news. She avoided everything and any real connections and the author never really tells us or shows us why this is such a problem for her. Her low self-esteem was evident from the beginning, before the accident, so the tragedy of this young lady didn't begin with the accident and that's something that didn't get reconciled in the story.

There were several things in the book that just didn't connect for me particularly her mother's rant, "Dr. King didn't die for this." If she was talking about lack of voting, high school drop out rates, urban violence, drug use, etc...then I would have agreed and applauded, but in too many cases when this line was used, she was not and the message was lost.

Our protagonist was a Spelman College grad, but she came off as less-educated and less mindful than the illerates she taught. Her lack of esteem and motivation was seen through the type of dead-end job she had, where she chose to live, to the type of man she chose to fall in love with--a locksmith who wasn't going to be anything more than a locksmith (not that I'm saying that there's anything wrong with locksmiths). She wants everything her friend has but has no esteem or motivation to get it. I would not want a friend like Aria. Her friendship would be like an albatrose and emotionally and spiritually draining. She was not a friend. Jealousy and envy are not characteristics of friendship. I do applaud the author for how she had Rochelle handle the situation in the end when she marries and she leaves Aria the gift. It was perfect and I probably would have done the same thing and then walk out of her life and not look back. Unfortunately, Aria didn't understand the significance of it. Whether that was the author's intention I simply don't know. I do not recall reading where Aria once told Rochelle she was happy for her and I never saw Aria rejoicing with her, instead she blast her for 'having everything she wants.' There's no grace in that type of friendship.

I found myself skipping through a lot of the narration because I didn't feel they made me like or get to know Aria any more. Most of it simply didn't move the story along or offer any profound food for thought. I think too I skipped through it because I didn't want to know more about this family, particularly Aria because the more I read about her the more I disliked her and everything she stood for. It just kept me stuck, like the protoganist, simply stuck without a clear conscience where she was going. I reread the opening prologue several times trying to understand the series of events, but things were just unbelieveable: CoCo arrived before the EMT? Where exactly did Hermione and her mother go when they got out of the car and left Aria with her father? They never came back to the car? I cannot imagine anyone doing what Aria did when she was in the car listening to her father, knowing the situation. She was old enough to understand the situation. The baby's cause of death--is that really possible? It would have been more beleiveable if she'd hit her head on the dashboard, which is more than likely what would have happened. Everything was too calm and too unbelievable to be believeable.

I never really grew to understand this family nor did I care for them, even at the end. I did understand CoCo's anger, but too bad she didn't have a bigger role in the story. No one got my vote of sympathy (perhaps maybe CoCo).

The ending was much to predictable and standard. I wish I could feel more for the protagonist, but there was nothing about her to like, nor any of the other main characters. I almost liked Dwayne, but then he slipped into the blame and victim stage, which, coincidentally made he and Aria absolutely perfect for each other because that's what Aria did throughout the entire book.

I wanted to like this book more than I did and I forced myself to finish it, which I did. Unfortunately I put it down not feeling any better about anyone in the story, with the exception of perhaps Rochelle. It was loaded with self-pity without any real internal growth for anyone. I don't see anyone in this story healing, truly healing.

However, with all that said, where the story fell short the author picked up with her writing abilities. I just thought some dots should have been connected a little better within the story.

Aria's family is still dealing with the after effects of a fatal car crash that took both her father and her baby sister, some 15 years ago. Aria, in particular, hasn't gotten over the guilt of being unable to offer comfort to her dying father.

Eloise, Aria's mother, is perhaps the most vividly painted character in the book. She too has been unable to come to terms with her own perceptions of the fatal accident that took her husband and her favorite child.

Hermione, the elder sister, left home at the earliest possible moment. Her escape came by marrying her deceased father's best friend, an act that still hasn't been completely forgiven by the family.

While the differences and distance between these family members sometimes seems insurmountable, the book is about how this group continues to relate as a family, in spite of all odds. When Aria needs to come to terms with untelling a lie she's been harboring, rather than meassuring how much she loses, the beauty of this story comes in seeing how much she's gained along the way.

In the book The Untelling I thought it was a good book.It talked about a girl who had struggles in her life.She had family and friends but they all turned there backs on her.I think that it was a great book I might even read it again.

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