Customer Reviews

Whitegirl

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is about two people who fall in love. Even though race is a predominant subject throught the story, essentially, it is about Milo and Charlotte. When we first meet Charlotte, she is a young girl, wanting to break free from her parents rigid religious fundamentalism. She goes to college and meets her 'expected' all-American boyfriend, Jack. Jack is on the ski team along with another member of the team, Milo. Milo of course is black. Fast forward to years later and Charlotte is super-model. She seems to give people the impression that she is an air-head, but because the book is written from her perspective, I felt that it was just an act. Milo is an extremely famous Olympiad gold medalist who is more famous than Charlotte. For the sake of space, I'll just say they date, they fall in love, they have incidents with other people who make race an issue. What I like about this book is that the race issues are all external to their relationship. While they see one another as Milo & Charlotte, everyone else, sees them as the black and white people. When Charlotte tells her best friend about problems in her marriage, her best friend blames it on race. The blacks are no better, Milo's agent calls Charlotte, Pink, and makes jokes at her expense. I wonder where the writer did her research because I know what it is like to date interracially and the nightclub scene where they go to a club and are harrassed by two women smacks of reality.
The end of this book is what makes it go from good to great. I raced to see who had tried to kill Charlotte. The ending didn't disappoint me, and allows the reader to form their own opinions. In fact, depending on your opinions, it gives food for thought.

I'm sure many will be tempted to reduce Whitegirl to a portrait of an interracial celebrity marriage, a flashy re-tooling of the OJ saga or even a modernized spin on the story of Othello. It exploits these references to be sure; but the novel is most importantly a chilling exploration of race in America. It presents an achingly intimate picture of the rise and violent dissolution of a marriage between Charlotte Halsey, a beautiful white model, and Milo Robicheaux, a black champion skier-sportscaster-actor. Along the way, Whitegirl examines America's schizoid attitude toward race: how celebrity nullifies blackness and affords dizzying access; how beauty trumps politics as a matter of course; and, most provocatively, how racial blending, while socially "accepted", remains a treacherous and in this case violent course. The novel is highly visual, whether it's Charlotte's discomfit over the segregation of her wedding guests (black to the left, white to the right), or her awkward fashion spread in front of a housing project about to implode. The novel ignites a number of questions, some explorative, many downright dangerous. Manning's protagonist is a fully drawn woman: self-indulgent, vain, strong, resigned, passionate, clueless, loving, upended. Her journey reflects America's roller-coaster relationship with celebrity, sex, race, violence, and power. A great read that asks unflinching questions.

I was completely hooked from the first page of Kate Manning's novel. The voice of the the "white girl" who is the narrator is one of the most memorably original I've come across: colloquial yet poetic; naive yet intelligent; vulnerable yet determined. I admire Manning's bravery and skill in tackling head-on not only the challenging subject of race but also the tyranny of beauty in our culture. Somehow she has made a totally plausible "hero" of a type that has probably never existed in real life: a black Olympic skier from New Hampshire. She also has perfect pitch on college romance, the New York bar scene, competitive skiing, and Christian piety. The prose is artistic but muscular, and the plot is driven by a poignant combination of tragedy and innocence. This is a brilliant book.

First, ignore the comments from other reviewers about the parallels between this story and the OJ-Nicole Brown Simpson case. The person who wrote this book is too smart to think that a reader would fall for anything so transparent, dated and shabby.

Yes, this book is about a white woman and a black man. But it is really about two people whose inner lives and outward circumstances are in conflict. (By the way, that has been a fine premise for any number of great books.) These two people fall in love, drawn together by their similarities, and then can't escape their irrevocable differences.

Charlotte Halsey grows up among conservative, religious Californians, and by her teens, she knows she wants no part of that life, so she lights out for the territories, which means going East to college. Milo Robicheaux is raised in an upper-middle-class black family in New England. As a gifted black man with sophisticated parents, he is expected to be anything but a world-class athlete.

Milo and Charlotte meet in college, do not connect, drift apart, and then re-connect in New York City, setting into motion the events that make the book memorable.

Charlotte is the center of this book; her psyche dominates the narrative. She is a beautiful, blond and outwardly very white. But she is rebellious, rambunctious, hard-drinking and, unlike most supermodels (which she turns out to be), anything but pouty and narcissistic. She is also wise, self-sufficient and athletic, in and out of the bedroom.

Milo is single-minded and driven to succeed, which he does as a skier and actor. He also is well-trained by his parents, who have schooled him in the art of succeeding in a white world, without becoming a pawn. Milo's head is turned, however, by the accusations from New York City's elite black community that being a prominent black in America and being apolitical, is a cop-out.

The story of Charlotte and Milo's courtship, wedding and marriage is told with crisp details that are at the same time touching and ominous. Even though the author lets you know at the beginning of the book that Charlotte nearly loses her life at the hands of an unknown intruder, this fact is only one of many that sustain this book. Whitegirl is for anyone who has lived and loved, and whose eyes are open to the complexities of race in America.

White Girl tells the story of Charlotte and Milo: their romance, love and downfall. Charlotte and Milo meet up initially at a college on the East Coast. What is special about Charlotte and Milo, depending on how one looks at it, is that Charlotte is a "white girl" and Milo is an African-American male.

Milo has grown up in a "white world". He grows up in New Hampshire to parents that are highly educated and "refined" in every sense of the word. Milo is a ski buff and goes on to win gold medals at two Olympics in skiing. Milo has always been around predominately
whites and was once told by an African-American woman that he wasn't "black" enough.

Charlotte is the antithesis to Milo. She grew up in a family that was dysfunctional in every sense of the word. While Milo has lived a charmed life, Charlotte has always struggled with having goals and being accepted. Charlotte is a "raving" beauty that eventually finds her calling in modeling.

Eventually Charlotte and Milo meet up after college and fall in love. They marry and have a daughter and appear to live a "perfect" life. However, on top of the usual struggles inherent in any relationship, Charlotte and Milo have to deal with prejudices and paradigms that American society has created for not only African-Americans, but for beautiful, white blonds as well.

I found this book interesting. My immediate question was about the ethnicity of the author. Was she writing from personal experience as a Black woman or white? Ms. Manning wrote from Charlotte's point of view a lot and didn't allow the reader to "see" a lot of Milo's thoughts and give him an opportunity to explain his actions. The ending leaves the reader wondering how it all ends. But still, the book did bring to surface a lot of issues that should be addressed in our society.

Leanna
R.E.A.L. Reviewers

As heavily scarred Charlotte Halsey recovers from the brutal beating, she wonders if the police are right that her husband Milo Robicheaux committed the atrocity as she cannot remember. The police case is powerful as Milo has her blood on him, cuts on his hands, and glass on his shoes. Punching out a cop at the scene does not lend credence to his claim that he was only trying to breathe life into Charlotte.

Charlotte looks back over their life together starting in the 1970s in college in Vermont where he was the rare black winter Olympic level athlete. Years later they meet again when she is a successful model and he is a retired sports figure who turned to acting. They fall in love and marry. The two public figures try to make their interracial marriage work though outside intrusion is the norm.

What determines whether readers will enjoy WHITEGIRL depends on the literary tastes of the audience. Those who write the plot off as an OJ rehashing is making a mistake because except on a superficial level, the plot is nothing close to the Simpsons saga. Instead, the story line looks deep into what fame under the public microscope does to relationships. Those readers who expect a did-he-do-it mystery will not enjoy this novel, especially the ending. Those fans who relish an insightful perusal of the relationship between a couple under the public's dissection will want to read Kate Manning's deep gaze into an interracial duo who sadly would have made it if they were not media darlings.

Harriet Klausner

A terrific page-turner. You simply won't be able to put it down. This is a beautiful, complicated love story between two beautiful, complicated people, Milo the black Olympic skier and Charlotte the gorgeous blonde model, whose lives are even more complicated by the explosive racial politics in which any black-white marriage in this country has to survive. Or not. Manning's novel is frequently just plain funny -- she's a very witty writer -- but it's deft as well. The tale is conveyed by a narrator whose intellectual capacities are, well, limited (she's a blonde model, after all), and that's rather tricky. Manning succeeds in that difficult writerly endeavor. She also succeeds in navigating the treacherous shoals of race in America -- and shows how, with even the best intentions, her protagonists get shipwrecked there. A lovely and important book.

I really enjoyed this book. It was thought-provoking and interesting. I've bought it as gifts for a few of my friends and look forward to reading it again.

Kate Manning's "White Girl" presents an age-old phenomenon from a new perspective. Black writers have long tackled the issue of interracial dating from either their personal experiences or those of people they know, but very few white writers have done the same. Manning's willingness to be one of the few is commendable. There are villains on both sides of the color spectrum and neither side is given much slack. Not being an African American man herself, she captures Milo's (the black male lead) inner-turmoil perfectly. This is a very fascinating read!

Kate Manning tells the mesmerizing love story of Charlotte, a stunningly beautiful white woman from California, and Milo, a stunningly handsome black man from New Hampshire. They meet briefly in college and then years later in New York where she has become a famous model and he has become an internationally celebrated skier.

The author stays out of the way of Charlotte, the narrator, as the story unfolds. In the process we observe two rather shallow people who have relied on their beauty and successes to get through a day. When they marry, however, they each have to confront issues of race and identity and vanities and the power of wealth. We twist and turn with them to a most unexpected and absolutely brilliant ending.

It is a book that wants to (needs to) be reread, thought about, paid attention to. Thank you Kate Manning.