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Linden Hills
A world away from Brewster Place, yet intimately connected to it, lies Linden Hills. With its showcase homes, elegant lawns, and other trappings of wealth, Linden Hills is not unlike other affluent black communities. But residence in this community is indisputable evidence of "making it." Although no one knows what the precise qualifications are, everyone knows that only certain people get to live there—and that they want to be among them.
Once people get to Linden Hills, the quest continues, more subtle, but equally fierce: the goal is a house on Tupelo Drive, the epitome of achievement and visible success. No one notices that the property on Tupelo Drive goes back on sale quickly; no one questions why there are always vacancies at Linden Hills.
In a resonant novel that takes as its model Dante's Inferno, Gloria Naylor reveals the truth about the American dream—that the price of success may very well be a journey down to the lowest circle of hell.
Once people get to Linden Hills, the quest continues, more subtle, but equally fierce: the goal is a house on Tupelo Drive, the epitome of achievement and visible success. No one notices that the property on Tupelo Drive goes back on sale quickly; no one questions why there are always vacancies at Linden Hills.
In a resonant novel that takes as its model Dante's Inferno, Gloria Naylor reveals the truth about the American dream—that the price of success may very well be a journey down to the lowest circle of hell.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
199 people are currently reading
5947 people want to read
About the author
Gloria Naylor
24 books686 followersGloria Naylor was an African-American novelist whose most popular work, The Women of Brewster Place, was made into a 1984 film starring Oprah Winfrey.
Naylor won the National Book Award for first fiction in 1983 for The Women of Brewster Place. Her subsequent novels included Linden Hills, Mama Day and Bailey's Cafe. In addition to her novels, Naylor wrote essays and screenplays, as well as the stage adaptation of Bailey's Cafe. Naylor also founded One Way Productions, an independent film company, and was involved in a literacy program in the Bronx.
A native New Yorker, Gloria Naylor was a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale University. She was distinguished with numerous honors, including Scholar-in-Residence, the University of Pennsylvania; Senior Fellow, The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; the President's Medal, Brooklyn College; and Visiting Professor, University of Kent, Canterbury, England. Naylor was the recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for her novels and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for screenwriting.
Naylor won the National Book Award for first fiction in 1983 for The Women of Brewster Place. Her subsequent novels included Linden Hills, Mama Day and Bailey's Cafe. In addition to her novels, Naylor wrote essays and screenplays, as well as the stage adaptation of Bailey's Cafe. Naylor also founded One Way Productions, an independent film company, and was involved in a literacy program in the Bronx.
A native New Yorker, Gloria Naylor was a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale University. She was distinguished with numerous honors, including Scholar-in-Residence, the University of Pennsylvania; Senior Fellow, The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; the President's Medal, Brooklyn College; and Visiting Professor, University of Kent, Canterbury, England. Naylor was the recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for her novels and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for screenwriting.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 272 reviews
August 5, 2019
"Fences...Even at the university: big, stone fences - and why? The gates are open, so it's not to keep anybody out or in. Why fences?...To get you used to the idea that what they have in there is different, special. Something to be separated from the rest of the world. They get you thinking fences, man, don’t you see it? Then when they’ve fenced you in from six years old till you’re twenty-six, they can let you out because you’re ready to believe that what they’ve given you up here, their version of life, is special. And you fence your own self in after that, protecting it from everybody else out there…”
Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills is a truly sharp and discerning glimpse into the modern-day class hierarchy embedded within black culture. Within the exploration of this quest for upward mobility and affluence, this novel featured some of the most true-to-life dialogue since Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and biting social commentary that rang so insightfully and authentically that it could only be true (not to mention witty enough to make me laugh out loud at the sheer truth and reality in it).
Written and set in the mid-1980s, the societal reflections here were absolutely superb, truly bordering on Southern Gothicism in the way that each explored the mores and values of this society—at times even based in the South. This element honestly made this novel and was the foundation from which the rest of the plot was built. I wasn’t expecting the Gothic elements at play here, so that was definitely an added delight. In fact, Linden Hills models itself as a play off of the classic Dante’s Inferno, with each street further and further down the hill of the neighborhood being more and more sought after, and also more and more corrupt. That was a truly clever play on Naylor’s part and lent so many added dimensions to this novel as the main characters “descended” further and further into the neighborhood.
For me, reading Linden Hills was often like sitting back at home in our old kitchen 20 years ago, listening to the “grown folk” shoot the breeze and discuss their woes over Bundt cake; it felt like home, and the authenticity of the subject matter, and characters’ reactions to it, felt like warm arms surrounding me as I “descended” into Naylor’s version of Dante’s hellish Inferno with them.
Here, our main protagonists are Willie Mason and Lester Tilson, two 20-year-old poets and best friends—one from the “wrong side of the street” and the other just barely inside the gates of Linden Hills himself, who get a lesson in what class lines mean to people in this neighborhood. Over the few days leading up to Christmas, Willie and Lester stare into the various faces of agony the people in Linden Hills try to hide. Watching them as they go about their lives, they begin to understand the motivations that keep them all in the rat race that is “keeping up with the Joneses.” Lester, who lives in Linden Hills, has already seen the inner workings of the neighborhood, the attitudes of its residents and the lies they cloak themselves in, thus he takes these lessons that Willie is busy learning for granted—in fact, he teeters throughout the book with being bored with such observations to, as the novel progresses, railing against them, because those very motivations that drive the Lindenites are also what keep him on the periphery of it all, neither fitting into their molds nor residing on the “right street” within Linden Hills. It is in this way that Gloria Naylor illustrates not only the racial lines but the class prejudices between us all, using the literal analogy of who’s from the right side of the street and who’s not, making the class lines drawn throughout this neighborhood both topographically and societally based. As they tear back the mask of Linden Hills, Willie and Lester begin to formulate their own theories on what shapes the world around them:
“You know, my grandmother called it selling the mirror in your soul…I guess she meant giving up that part of you that lets you know who you are…So you keep that mirror and when it’s crazy outside, you look inside and you’ll always know exactly where you are and wat you are. And you call that peace…These people have lost that, Willie. They’ve lost all touch with what it is to be them. Because there’s not a damned thing inside anymore to let them know.”
In tackling these major themes, Naylor also elegantly delves into social issues from the often-fragile bonds of marriage, to the separation of college-educated black women from their counterparts, to the line between “acting white” and “acting black,” among other themes:
“He would have found the comments that he was trying to be white totally bizarre. Being white was the furthest thing from his mind, since he spent every waking moment trying to be no color at all.”
I’ll admit that the writing style vexed me at times, usually at a crescendo of activity near the end of a chapter. My one note of criticism here is that it read as if Naylor was trying too hard to be lyrical, and it didn’t flow effortlessly. In fact, those moments in the novel often read as disjointed and convoluted, and I had to reread several of those passages for comprehension.
All in all, Gloria Naylor showed poetic lyricism and incisor-like insight in her execution of this novel, and it is a book that I would happily read again. It is because of the narrative undercurrents that I place this novel in the Southern Gothic arena (and I’ll give it that pass since part of it was based in Georgia), and it’s because of the bumbling “crescendo prose” that I deduct 1 star. BUT, despite that deduction, Linden Hills has absolutely earned its spot in my “Oh Where Have You Been All My Life” collection, because very rarely indeed will you come across a novel with such poise and bite as this one. 4 stars ****
FOLLOW ME HERE:
Art + Deco Agency Book Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Art + Deco Publishing Agency
Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills is a truly sharp and discerning glimpse into the modern-day class hierarchy embedded within black culture. Within the exploration of this quest for upward mobility and affluence, this novel featured some of the most true-to-life dialogue since Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and biting social commentary that rang so insightfully and authentically that it could only be true (not to mention witty enough to make me laugh out loud at the sheer truth and reality in it).
Written and set in the mid-1980s, the societal reflections here were absolutely superb, truly bordering on Southern Gothicism in the way that each explored the mores and values of this society—at times even based in the South. This element honestly made this novel and was the foundation from which the rest of the plot was built. I wasn’t expecting the Gothic elements at play here, so that was definitely an added delight. In fact, Linden Hills models itself as a play off of the classic Dante’s Inferno, with each street further and further down the hill of the neighborhood being more and more sought after, and also more and more corrupt. That was a truly clever play on Naylor’s part and lent so many added dimensions to this novel as the main characters “descended” further and further into the neighborhood.
For me, reading Linden Hills was often like sitting back at home in our old kitchen 20 years ago, listening to the “grown folk” shoot the breeze and discuss their woes over Bundt cake; it felt like home, and the authenticity of the subject matter, and characters’ reactions to it, felt like warm arms surrounding me as I “descended” into Naylor’s version of Dante’s hellish Inferno with them.
Here, our main protagonists are Willie Mason and Lester Tilson, two 20-year-old poets and best friends—one from the “wrong side of the street” and the other just barely inside the gates of Linden Hills himself, who get a lesson in what class lines mean to people in this neighborhood. Over the few days leading up to Christmas, Willie and Lester stare into the various faces of agony the people in Linden Hills try to hide. Watching them as they go about their lives, they begin to understand the motivations that keep them all in the rat race that is “keeping up with the Joneses.” Lester, who lives in Linden Hills, has already seen the inner workings of the neighborhood, the attitudes of its residents and the lies they cloak themselves in, thus he takes these lessons that Willie is busy learning for granted—in fact, he teeters throughout the book with being bored with such observations to, as the novel progresses, railing against them, because those very motivations that drive the Lindenites are also what keep him on the periphery of it all, neither fitting into their molds nor residing on the “right street” within Linden Hills. It is in this way that Gloria Naylor illustrates not only the racial lines but the class prejudices between us all, using the literal analogy of who’s from the right side of the street and who’s not, making the class lines drawn throughout this neighborhood both topographically and societally based. As they tear back the mask of Linden Hills, Willie and Lester begin to formulate their own theories on what shapes the world around them:
“You know, my grandmother called it selling the mirror in your soul…I guess she meant giving up that part of you that lets you know who you are…So you keep that mirror and when it’s crazy outside, you look inside and you’ll always know exactly where you are and wat you are. And you call that peace…These people have lost that, Willie. They’ve lost all touch with what it is to be them. Because there’s not a damned thing inside anymore to let them know.”
In tackling these major themes, Naylor also elegantly delves into social issues from the often-fragile bonds of marriage, to the separation of college-educated black women from their counterparts, to the line between “acting white” and “acting black,” among other themes:
“He would have found the comments that he was trying to be white totally bizarre. Being white was the furthest thing from his mind, since he spent every waking moment trying to be no color at all.”
I’ll admit that the writing style vexed me at times, usually at a crescendo of activity near the end of a chapter. My one note of criticism here is that it read as if Naylor was trying too hard to be lyrical, and it didn’t flow effortlessly. In fact, those moments in the novel often read as disjointed and convoluted, and I had to reread several of those passages for comprehension.
All in all, Gloria Naylor showed poetic lyricism and incisor-like insight in her execution of this novel, and it is a book that I would happily read again. It is because of the narrative undercurrents that I place this novel in the Southern Gothic arena (and I’ll give it that pass since part of it was based in Georgia), and it’s because of the bumbling “crescendo prose” that I deduct 1 star. BUT, despite that deduction, Linden Hills has absolutely earned its spot in my “Oh Where Have You Been All My Life” collection, because very rarely indeed will you come across a novel with such poise and bite as this one. 4 stars ****
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Art + Deco Agency Book Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Art + Deco Publishing Agency
November 7, 2024
This novel had some really interesting takes on the costs of upward mobility, specifically the cons of assimilating to whiteness/heteronormative life styles. The commentary about class and class’s intersections with race felt, for better or worse, still relevant today. Can anyone truly ascend in a system that wasn’t made for them without losing a part of themselves? This question is explored throughout Linden Hills and its characters lives.
Unfortunately I found the writing a bit dense/obtuse and not the easiest to get into/stick with. However I can see why other people enjoyed this novel.
Unfortunately I found the writing a bit dense/obtuse and not the easiest to get into/stick with. However I can see why other people enjoyed this novel.
March 28, 2020
Success is one of the most popular topics of the modern era. This is a world populated with self-help books that will help you start your new business, spend your money wiser, change your mindset so that it's better than those around you, eat a plant-based diet, among other things. What these books, as well as images of success scattered on Social Media, don't often show you is the suffering that can accompany success. The traps that await you once you "make it." Until you read Linden Hills.
Linden Hills is a Black community that is ran by the Nedeed family, but we are given a tour of this community through a brief snapshot of lives of Willie aka "White," and Lester aka "Shit." Through White & Shit, we meet all kinds of characters who are thriving, suffering, fronting, stunting and much more.
Through Linden we see a version of Black Power politics not often written about in African American Literature. Black Financial Power. We see the mindset that accompanies it. The sacrifices, the discipline, the impact, the studiousness, the tragedies. All while Willie & Lester are just trying to hustle enough money to buy their loved ones, or those they are trying to impress/love on, some Christmas gifts.
Linden Hills is worth reading for scathing critique Gloria Naylor gives the Black Bourgeoisie as well as the humor. For the humanity offered to those who she critiques, for the view into the world of making it while Black in America. It makes you wonder if those who "make it" are doing it for themselves or are they doing it for those around them.
After all, when I was reading this I did say to myself.... This novel reminds me of Instagram.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to participate in my #10Books10Decades Challenge.
This is my first entry and this is my book of the 1980s.
Click on the link for more information on the #10Books10Decades Challenge: https://www.instagram.com/p/B6yyRMdg2ya/
Linden Hills is a Black community that is ran by the Nedeed family, but we are given a tour of this community through a brief snapshot of lives of Willie aka "White," and Lester aka "Shit." Through White & Shit, we meet all kinds of characters who are thriving, suffering, fronting, stunting and much more.
Through Linden we see a version of Black Power politics not often written about in African American Literature. Black Financial Power. We see the mindset that accompanies it. The sacrifices, the discipline, the impact, the studiousness, the tragedies. All while Willie & Lester are just trying to hustle enough money to buy their loved ones, or those they are trying to impress/love on, some Christmas gifts.
Linden Hills is worth reading for scathing critique Gloria Naylor gives the Black Bourgeoisie as well as the humor. For the humanity offered to those who she critiques, for the view into the world of making it while Black in America. It makes you wonder if those who "make it" are doing it for themselves or are they doing it for those around them.
After all, when I was reading this I did say to myself.... This novel reminds me of Instagram.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to participate in my #10Books10Decades Challenge.
This is my first entry and this is my book of the 1980s.
Click on the link for more information on the #10Books10Decades Challenge: https://www.instagram.com/p/B6yyRMdg2ya/
July 12, 2020
"Come, look, listen and perhaps you will learn how to turn the memory of our iron chains into gold chains. The cotton fields that broke your grandparents' backs can cover yours in gabardine."
.
From LINDEN HILLS by Gloria Naylor, 1985.
Crafting authentic dialogue is a master skill. We've all read wooden dialogue and thought 'people don't really talk like that' in our reader mind.
Capturing the way people speak, emphasize, and elucidate: It speaks to the deep and complex relationship between the fictional characters, and it also speaks to the way and author understands human psyche and relational dynamics.
Gloria Naylor is an absolute master of these skills.
I saw it in her debut, coincidentally also my first read by her, Women of Brewster Place (1982). There were so many take-aways from that National Book Award winner, but what stayed with me was the inter-generational relationships - mothers and daughters most specifically in that work. My second read was Bailey's Cafe (1992) which had a lot of family dynamics, but also friends and clientele.
Linden Hills is a loose retelling of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, patterned in an affluent African-American neighborhood. Our guides to this "underworld" are 2 young street poets - Willie and 'Shit' Lester. The dynamics between these two friends showcases Naylor's #storytelling once again, but also how they relate to an older generation, and in a world/neighborhood where classism and colorism rule supreme. Naylor has many distinct messages here, heavy in allegory, but also a richness of complexity - even in a moral tale, there's no binary.
There were some seeming tangents as I read along, interesting but I was wondering how they tied in. I learned to TRUST IN GLORIA, she will bring it home, often in a fantasmagoric climax, much like she does in other works.
"I'm talking about but being able to do the course of human history, a collective history or an individual one. You can delay the inevitable, set up roadblocks and detours...[that would be] like trying to ward off a flood with a teacup."
.
"Fences... The gates are open, so it's not too keep anybody out of in. Why fences? To get you used to the idea that what they have in there is different, special. Something to be separated from the rest of the world... And then you fence your own self in after that, protecting it from everybody else *out there*."
.
From LINDEN HILLS by Gloria Naylor, 1985.
Crafting authentic dialogue is a master skill. We've all read wooden dialogue and thought 'people don't really talk like that' in our reader mind.
Capturing the way people speak, emphasize, and elucidate: It speaks to the deep and complex relationship between the fictional characters, and it also speaks to the way and author understands human psyche and relational dynamics.
Gloria Naylor is an absolute master of these skills.
I saw it in her debut, coincidentally also my first read by her, Women of Brewster Place (1982). There were so many take-aways from that National Book Award winner, but what stayed with me was the inter-generational relationships - mothers and daughters most specifically in that work. My second read was Bailey's Cafe (1992) which had a lot of family dynamics, but also friends and clientele.
Linden Hills is a loose retelling of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, patterned in an affluent African-American neighborhood. Our guides to this "underworld" are 2 young street poets - Willie and 'Shit' Lester. The dynamics between these two friends showcases Naylor's #storytelling once again, but also how they relate to an older generation, and in a world/neighborhood where classism and colorism rule supreme. Naylor has many distinct messages here, heavy in allegory, but also a richness of complexity - even in a moral tale, there's no binary.
There were some seeming tangents as I read along, interesting but I was wondering how they tied in. I learned to TRUST IN GLORIA, she will bring it home, often in a fantasmagoric climax, much like she does in other works.
"I'm talking about but being able to do the course of human history, a collective history or an individual one. You can delay the inevitable, set up roadblocks and detours...[that would be] like trying to ward off a flood with a teacup."
.
"Fences... The gates are open, so it's not too keep anybody out of in. Why fences? To get you used to the idea that what they have in there is different, special. Something to be separated from the rest of the world... And then you fence your own self in after that, protecting it from everybody else *out there*."
January 1, 2015
This is one I will be thinking about for quite a while.
Linden Hills has a lot to say about conformity and passivity, and buying into pre-conceived views and standards. It deconstructs the American dream of success and wealth and progress, and Naylor specifically criticizes assimilation, conforming to white and patriarchal standards. The characters who have made it to Linden Hills have sacrificed everything of true value to live a lifestyle which on the outside symbolizes success, and their inner lives are seeped of color and passion and true human emotion as a result. The fact that the first Luther Needed supposedly bought the land with money gained from the sale of his wife and children into slavery is an extreme and very symbolic example. Another is Maxwell, who is practically more cyborg than human, and Winston’s conformity is especially tragic. The women (Laurel, who even after her divorce, displacement, and death is still referred to as “Howard’s wife,” and all the Needed wives, who are literally eclipsed and erased by the men in their lives) are especially vulnerable in the patriarchal Linden Hills.
When I first read the blurb on the back cover- “a resonant novel that takes as its model Dante’s Inferno”- my interest was immediately piqued. I love when modern novels allude to classic literature and mythology, and since I went into it looking for connections they were easy to spot. The two poets journeying through the circular drives meeting lost souls, Luther (Lucifer) down by the frozen lake, the literal inferno that consumes him at the end…all pretty blatant references. Blatant and awesome. I was reminded a lot of Faustus too, since they all sort of sold their souls when conforming to the rules of Luther/Lucifer. Very cool book.
Linden Hills has a lot to say about conformity and passivity, and buying into pre-conceived views and standards. It deconstructs the American dream of success and wealth and progress, and Naylor specifically criticizes assimilation, conforming to white and patriarchal standards. The characters who have made it to Linden Hills have sacrificed everything of true value to live a lifestyle which on the outside symbolizes success, and their inner lives are seeped of color and passion and true human emotion as a result. The fact that the first Luther Needed supposedly bought the land with money gained from the sale of his wife and children into slavery is an extreme and very symbolic example. Another is Maxwell, who is practically more cyborg than human, and Winston’s conformity is especially tragic. The women (Laurel, who even after her divorce, displacement, and death is still referred to as “Howard’s wife,” and all the Needed wives, who are literally eclipsed and erased by the men in their lives) are especially vulnerable in the patriarchal Linden Hills.
When I first read the blurb on the back cover- “a resonant novel that takes as its model Dante’s Inferno”- my interest was immediately piqued. I love when modern novels allude to classic literature and mythology, and since I went into it looking for connections they were easy to spot. The two poets journeying through the circular drives meeting lost souls, Luther (Lucifer) down by the frozen lake, the literal inferno that consumes him at the end…all pretty blatant references. Blatant and awesome. I was reminded a lot of Faustus too, since they all sort of sold their souls when conforming to the rules of Luther/Lucifer. Very cool book.
January 14, 2020
Gloriaaaaa, viva la Gloriaaaaa. No, I'm not a Green Day's fan, I just love Gloria Naylor. ;) Linden Hills reads like a sequel to her debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place, so I would actually recommend reading the latter first for context. In her debut, Linden Hills is established as the estate the Black Americans living in Brewster Place aspire to. From the outside, it seems perfect. A little paradise in which rich and hardworking Black Americans are allowed to live in.
So, Luther Nedeed holds the power over the large estate, he decides who gets to live there. The inhabitants of Linden Hills are ruled through greed, materialism and lack of morals. The current Luther Nedeed for instance treats his wife and son like strangers and locks them into his basement, far away from the eyes of the public. So, everyone wants to buy a home in Linden Hills, no one sees the evil that lurks inside of it.
The protagonists, Lester and Willie (read Dante and Virgil), are two unemployed poets who also happen to be best friends. We discover Linden Hills through their eyes as they are doing jobs around the neighbourhood in the week leading up to Christmas.
What’s especially interesting about Linden Hills is how Naylor structures the novel. We see the nods to Dante’s Inferno in how the estate is built. Each level of the estate corresponds to one of Dante’s levels of Hell. Lester lives at the very top with his mother and sister, in what appears to be the least prestigious area. As Lester and Willie travel down through the estate, the houses become grander and the residents unhappier. At the lowest level resides Luther, who happens to also be the town undertaker. His home is barricaded off from the rest with a lake and a drawbridge, separating him from everyone else.
So Naylor uses Dante's Inferno as a model for the American Dream. Naylor exposes that dream as a nightmare. The novel asks the reader to consider for a moment what the American Dream asks of its participants. For one thing, Naylor drives home that the community is driven apart by that quest for a better life. They forget their common ancestry in suffering and with that, the community loses its heritage and its union. This, combined with the already insidious effects of racism (especially systemic racism) cause the citizens of Linden Hill to experience daily life as a kind of hell.
Among the characters we meet are Norman, who is periodically felled by a strange malady that causes him to tear at his own skin to remove the imagined slimy substance that he feels is consuming him, and the Rev. Michael T. Hollis, who has forsaken his Baptist background to adopt the staid practices of the Episcopal Church and in the process become an alcoholic. Then there is Maxwell Smyth, who, in pursuit of perfection and an untainted image, exercises so much control that even his bodily excretions are without odor. And, of course, there is the tormented Luther Nedeed himself - plagued by a baffling disruption of his sovereignty that threatens his kingdom, but maintaining his strange dominance over the inhabitants of Linden Hills.
As Willie and Lester work their way down the circular drives, Naylor strips away the facade of material success to reveal a netherworld of chaos and despair. Simply stated, Naylor hammers home the point that Black Americans who aspire to the white world and material success will become trapped in the American dream, they will experience the torments of "hell".
Linden Hills is an intriguing novel that will probably give you a headache the more you think about it. Naylor's prose highly accessible, there's even some tongue-in-cheek humor. It's not as nurturing and mind-blowing of a read as her other novels, but it's still really quite brilliant.
In Linden Hills they could forget that the world said you spelled black with a capital nothing. Well, they were something and there was everything around them to show it. The world hadn't given them anything but the chance to fail -- and they hadn't failed, because they were in Linden Hills. They had a thousand years and a day to sit right there and forget what it meant to be black, because it meant working yourself to death just to stand still.The estate was purchased by the first Luther Nedeed in 1820 after he had sold his octoroon wife and six children into slavery. The land has remained under the proprietorship of the Nedeeds for more than 150 years. Luther (read Lucifer), as all the males in the Nedeed family are named, opened a funeral parlor, then developed the land and leased sections to black families. His sons and grandsons, all of whom are physical copies of the original landowner, furthered his plan - to establish a showcase black community.
So, Luther Nedeed holds the power over the large estate, he decides who gets to live there. The inhabitants of Linden Hills are ruled through greed, materialism and lack of morals. The current Luther Nedeed for instance treats his wife and son like strangers and locks them into his basement, far away from the eyes of the public. So, everyone wants to buy a home in Linden Hills, no one sees the evil that lurks inside of it.
The protagonists, Lester and Willie (read Dante and Virgil), are two unemployed poets who also happen to be best friends. We discover Linden Hills through their eyes as they are doing jobs around the neighbourhood in the week leading up to Christmas.
What’s especially interesting about Linden Hills is how Naylor structures the novel. We see the nods to Dante’s Inferno in how the estate is built. Each level of the estate corresponds to one of Dante’s levels of Hell. Lester lives at the very top with his mother and sister, in what appears to be the least prestigious area. As Lester and Willie travel down through the estate, the houses become grander and the residents unhappier. At the lowest level resides Luther, who happens to also be the town undertaker. His home is barricaded off from the rest with a lake and a drawbridge, separating him from everyone else.
So Naylor uses Dante's Inferno as a model for the American Dream. Naylor exposes that dream as a nightmare. The novel asks the reader to consider for a moment what the American Dream asks of its participants. For one thing, Naylor drives home that the community is driven apart by that quest for a better life. They forget their common ancestry in suffering and with that, the community loses its heritage and its union. This, combined with the already insidious effects of racism (especially systemic racism) cause the citizens of Linden Hill to experience daily life as a kind of hell.
“It’s true. I was just telling Willie this morning those are a bunch of the saddest niggers you’ll ever wanna meet. They eat, sleep, and breathe for one thing – making it. And making it where?”So, what does it mean to "make it" as a Black American citizen in the United States? People never get off their quest for wealth, power and success. Once people get to Linden Hills, the quest continues, more subtle, but equally fierce: the goal is a house on Tupelo Drive, the epitome of achievement and visible success. No one notices that the property on Tupelo Drive goes back on sale quickly; no one questions why there are always vacancies at Linden Hills. Naylor's message is clear: the price of success may very well be a journey down to the lowest circle of hell.
Among the characters we meet are Norman, who is periodically felled by a strange malady that causes him to tear at his own skin to remove the imagined slimy substance that he feels is consuming him, and the Rev. Michael T. Hollis, who has forsaken his Baptist background to adopt the staid practices of the Episcopal Church and in the process become an alcoholic. Then there is Maxwell Smyth, who, in pursuit of perfection and an untainted image, exercises so much control that even his bodily excretions are without odor. And, of course, there is the tormented Luther Nedeed himself - plagued by a baffling disruption of his sovereignty that threatens his kingdom, but maintaining his strange dominance over the inhabitants of Linden Hills.
As Willie and Lester work their way down the circular drives, Naylor strips away the facade of material success to reveal a netherworld of chaos and despair. Simply stated, Naylor hammers home the point that Black Americans who aspire to the white world and material success will become trapped in the American dream, they will experience the torments of "hell".
Linden Hills is an intriguing novel that will probably give you a headache the more you think about it. Naylor's prose highly accessible, there's even some tongue-in-cheek humor. It's not as nurturing and mind-blowing of a read as her other novels, but it's still really quite brilliant.
April 18, 2015
"If anything was the problem with Linden Hills, it was that nothing seemed to be what it really was. Everything was turned upside down in that place."
This is most definitely a book I'd deem a necessary inclusion in the "Essential Gloria Naylor Reads".
This is another amazing read. I read Gloria's Mama Day when I was young and probably didn't have the capacity to appreciate such books. Having read that one book, I kind of put her books to the side for decades as books that I was not too fond of only to rediscover her work at this late stage and want to kick myself after each read for not having read sooner. Ms Naylor's voice is poetic, always poignant and she is one of the ultimate masters of the combined short story. She has this infallible art for incorporating characters who could stand alone in independent short stories and weaving them together into a beautifully written expose or privileged glance into the cogs of the African American community. Gloria Naylor tells the stories that we know but don't talk about. All of her characters always have some strangely familiar personality trait. You know these people. You grew up with them. You lived down the street from a neighbor like this. She reminds me of a lady from my church. I know their story. You relate. You can put real life faces to the stories she tells. Gloria Naylor is giving you the inside story on that man you see walk his dog. The uncanny resemblance to real life is astounding. Her books are purely intoxicating. Within our community we might say to each other:
"Girl, did you hear about old Luther down on Tupelo Drive? What he did to his wife."
Yet here is Gloria transcending life into poetic thought.:
"There is a man in a house at the bottom of a hill. And his wife has no name."
The rich. The poor. No matter what mask you walk the neighborhood wearing, resistance is futile. Gloria Naylor is taking us across the manicured lawns, behind the closed doors, past the draped windows, into the rooms, down into the bowels of basements, into histories and inside souls.
What is ticking behind the eyelids of the Linden Hills residents is astounding. It's almost as if the neighborhood itself is a living, breathing entity of the third spiritual kind. On the surface Linden Hills is an exclusive neighborhood filled with successful African American residents. These people work hard and feel they deserve the exclusivity that can only be derived from living on the most prominent street in Linden Hills near the great great grandson of its founder Luther Nedeed. Snooty, stuck up, on the surface these people set themselves aside from the rest of the world outside their perfect homes and their aspirant model community. Reminiscent of some cult, if you are included you are included in all their events. Everyone knows one another. If you are excluded, you may be ushered out of the balustrades of the community entrance by police.
The original residents of Linden Hills had something to prove. When the country was ruled by racial intolerance and segregation. The original residents were seeking to create a place where the successful of their communities could come, live and create their own exclusive utopia with their hard earned money. A sort of community within the community for successful African Americans. They had a pride for what they worked hard for and there was a process for entry and inclusion. However, the current residents are a defunct shadow of what their predecessors attempted to be. The originals felt since they worked hard and they could not move into better communities due to their race, they'd create their own. The current residents are strutting their wealth upon their backs like peacock feathers and fighting amongst themselves to upgrade to the best mansion like houses on Tupelo Drive, near Luther Needed. These people are troubled. These current residents, obsessed with status, competition and vanity have lost their souls to their distorted dreams of material gain.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
This is the crux of the issue concerning the current residents of Linden Hills. They have exchanged their souls for matter. They've released them into the atmosphere to become a part of the mass of dying spirits that below the surface is Linden Hills. The thick, heavy gummy mass of something indescribable that has risen up from its inhabitants and only is noticeable to those who don't belong. Like Willie Mason.
Willie Mason didn't grow up living inside the confines of Linden Hills but his best friend Lester Tilison had. Willie never had much living in the same town but outside of Linden Hills his family was poor. Lester's family lived in Linden Hills. His grandmother having been one of the original residents, but her refusal to kowtow to the whims of the infamous Needed family caused them to live on the rails of the Linden Hills society. They had the house but had to struggle for the money. Willie, always wished he lived there. Lester, rebellious, rejected everything it stood for, even though the ways of the community had already been ingrained into his soul. Lester rejected the education his mother so desperately wanted him to have rendering him a jobless young man with pipe dreams of becoming a famous poet. One year around The Christmas season, a friend suggests that Willie and Lester could make some money for the holidays by soliciting odd jobs up in Linden Hills. Through Willie and Lester, we meet the complex inhabitants of Linden Hills. With Lester as our guide and Willies unjaded perspective each story of this living, breathing community is told.
If you never thought a place could have a personality, you need to read this book. In the book, from his first encounter Willie had dreams and that is what entering Linden Hills is like. I imagine when you take that first step inside this exclusive community you'd feel your skin prickle with an er of something you just can't put your finger on. And as you move amongst the streets and the drives toward the bottom near the Needed place you'd feel your heart jump up into your throat and that mysterious unnamed "something" we all have would tell us to "Go Back! Immediately! Don't go there!"
It's funny. I remember watching the "Women of Brewster Place" movie ages ago when Cicely Tyson played Melanie/Kiswana Browne's mom and she mentioned they were from Linden Hills. I had no idea of this book at the time but remember thinking by the way she played the roll it must be some very snooty place. I was so ecstatic upon my reintroduction of Gloria Naylor to discover this book. I loved it.
I give this book a 5star rating. I 100% recommended it to everyone because I feel it's essential reading on so many levels. You can look at economically, sociologically, historically, psychoanalytically the limits are endless for dissecting this book for those that enjoy pulling apart for deeper meaning. For those who just want to read some good fiction, as I did when I set out, this is a great book. It's relative. It's funny at times. It's a book you can talk back to and you really can't put it down.
I look forward to reading more of Gloria Naylor's books.
This is most definitely a book I'd deem a necessary inclusion in the "Essential Gloria Naylor Reads".
This is another amazing read. I read Gloria's Mama Day when I was young and probably didn't have the capacity to appreciate such books. Having read that one book, I kind of put her books to the side for decades as books that I was not too fond of only to rediscover her work at this late stage and want to kick myself after each read for not having read sooner. Ms Naylor's voice is poetic, always poignant and she is one of the ultimate masters of the combined short story. She has this infallible art for incorporating characters who could stand alone in independent short stories and weaving them together into a beautifully written expose or privileged glance into the cogs of the African American community. Gloria Naylor tells the stories that we know but don't talk about. All of her characters always have some strangely familiar personality trait. You know these people. You grew up with them. You lived down the street from a neighbor like this. She reminds me of a lady from my church. I know their story. You relate. You can put real life faces to the stories she tells. Gloria Naylor is giving you the inside story on that man you see walk his dog. The uncanny resemblance to real life is astounding. Her books are purely intoxicating. Within our community we might say to each other:
"Girl, did you hear about old Luther down on Tupelo Drive? What he did to his wife."
Yet here is Gloria transcending life into poetic thought.:
"There is a man in a house at the bottom of a hill. And his wife has no name."
The rich. The poor. No matter what mask you walk the neighborhood wearing, resistance is futile. Gloria Naylor is taking us across the manicured lawns, behind the closed doors, past the draped windows, into the rooms, down into the bowels of basements, into histories and inside souls.
What is ticking behind the eyelids of the Linden Hills residents is astounding. It's almost as if the neighborhood itself is a living, breathing entity of the third spiritual kind. On the surface Linden Hills is an exclusive neighborhood filled with successful African American residents. These people work hard and feel they deserve the exclusivity that can only be derived from living on the most prominent street in Linden Hills near the great great grandson of its founder Luther Nedeed. Snooty, stuck up, on the surface these people set themselves aside from the rest of the world outside their perfect homes and their aspirant model community. Reminiscent of some cult, if you are included you are included in all their events. Everyone knows one another. If you are excluded, you may be ushered out of the balustrades of the community entrance by police.
The original residents of Linden Hills had something to prove. When the country was ruled by racial intolerance and segregation. The original residents were seeking to create a place where the successful of their communities could come, live and create their own exclusive utopia with their hard earned money. A sort of community within the community for successful African Americans. They had a pride for what they worked hard for and there was a process for entry and inclusion. However, the current residents are a defunct shadow of what their predecessors attempted to be. The originals felt since they worked hard and they could not move into better communities due to their race, they'd create their own. The current residents are strutting their wealth upon their backs like peacock feathers and fighting amongst themselves to upgrade to the best mansion like houses on Tupelo Drive, near Luther Needed. These people are troubled. These current residents, obsessed with status, competition and vanity have lost their souls to their distorted dreams of material gain.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
This is the crux of the issue concerning the current residents of Linden Hills. They have exchanged their souls for matter. They've released them into the atmosphere to become a part of the mass of dying spirits that below the surface is Linden Hills. The thick, heavy gummy mass of something indescribable that has risen up from its inhabitants and only is noticeable to those who don't belong. Like Willie Mason.
Willie Mason didn't grow up living inside the confines of Linden Hills but his best friend Lester Tilison had. Willie never had much living in the same town but outside of Linden Hills his family was poor. Lester's family lived in Linden Hills. His grandmother having been one of the original residents, but her refusal to kowtow to the whims of the infamous Needed family caused them to live on the rails of the Linden Hills society. They had the house but had to struggle for the money. Willie, always wished he lived there. Lester, rebellious, rejected everything it stood for, even though the ways of the community had already been ingrained into his soul. Lester rejected the education his mother so desperately wanted him to have rendering him a jobless young man with pipe dreams of becoming a famous poet. One year around The Christmas season, a friend suggests that Willie and Lester could make some money for the holidays by soliciting odd jobs up in Linden Hills. Through Willie and Lester, we meet the complex inhabitants of Linden Hills. With Lester as our guide and Willies unjaded perspective each story of this living, breathing community is told.
If you never thought a place could have a personality, you need to read this book. In the book, from his first encounter Willie had dreams and that is what entering Linden Hills is like. I imagine when you take that first step inside this exclusive community you'd feel your skin prickle with an er of something you just can't put your finger on. And as you move amongst the streets and the drives toward the bottom near the Needed place you'd feel your heart jump up into your throat and that mysterious unnamed "something" we all have would tell us to "Go Back! Immediately! Don't go there!"
It's funny. I remember watching the "Women of Brewster Place" movie ages ago when Cicely Tyson played Melanie/Kiswana Browne's mom and she mentioned they were from Linden Hills. I had no idea of this book at the time but remember thinking by the way she played the roll it must be some very snooty place. I was so ecstatic upon my reintroduction of Gloria Naylor to discover this book. I loved it.
I give this book a 5star rating. I 100% recommended it to everyone because I feel it's essential reading on so many levels. You can look at economically, sociologically, historically, psychoanalytically the limits are endless for dissecting this book for those that enjoy pulling apart for deeper meaning. For those who just want to read some good fiction, as I did when I set out, this is a great book. It's relative. It's funny at times. It's a book you can talk back to and you really can't put it down.
I look forward to reading more of Gloria Naylor's books.
July 19, 2025
3,5 ⭐
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Linden Hills es un barrio residencial exclusivo para gente de color, un rincón en el mundo en donde poder soñar con prosperar y tener un futuro mejor. Pero en este sitio también existen los prejuicios, el de la piel más oscura o un poco más clara, el de quien tiene más dinero o de qué lado de la calle principal vive.
Luther es el funebrero y el dueño legítimo de los terrenos donde se erige Linden Hill. A la vista de todos, parece un hombre cabal, pero no todo lo que brilla es oro y hay oscuros secretos encerrados en el sótano de su casa.
Willie y Lester don jóvenes y se ganan la vida haciendo trabajos en el barrio. Uno vive allí, y el otro ni siquiera quiere oír hablar de mudarse a Linden Hills. Ellos van interactuando con distintos personajes que ilustran cómo era vivir en los sesenta, en una urbanización que parece sostenerse en pie dentro de una burbuja... pero en su interior, se cuecen demasiadas historias turbias que seguramente terminarán por estallar.
El pero que le pongo es que son capítulos larguísimos, pero en general me gustó y el final, aunque trágico, me pareció que estuvo a la altura de la historia.
#lecturaconjunta
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Linden Hills es un barrio residencial exclusivo para gente de color, un rincón en el mundo en donde poder soñar con prosperar y tener un futuro mejor. Pero en este sitio también existen los prejuicios, el de la piel más oscura o un poco más clara, el de quien tiene más dinero o de qué lado de la calle principal vive.
Luther es el funebrero y el dueño legítimo de los terrenos donde se erige Linden Hill. A la vista de todos, parece un hombre cabal, pero no todo lo que brilla es oro y hay oscuros secretos encerrados en el sótano de su casa.
Willie y Lester don jóvenes y se ganan la vida haciendo trabajos en el barrio. Uno vive allí, y el otro ni siquiera quiere oír hablar de mudarse a Linden Hills. Ellos van interactuando con distintos personajes que ilustran cómo era vivir en los sesenta, en una urbanización que parece sostenerse en pie dentro de una burbuja... pero en su interior, se cuecen demasiadas historias turbias que seguramente terminarán por estallar.
El pero que le pongo es que son capítulos larguísimos, pero en general me gustó y el final, aunque trágico, me pareció que estuvo a la altura de la historia.
#lecturaconjunta
May 21, 2025
A partir de la recreación de Linden Hills, un barrio rico que se ha ido construyendo en forma de cono invertido desde la primera propiedad a los pies de una colina, por Luther Needed fundador y los sucesivos descendientes continuadores del mismo patrón y con el mismo nombre, la autora adapta los círculos del infierno de Dante, y cada nivel va representando un mayor caché en la propiedad y sus correspondientes pecados de mayor categoría, aunque yo diría de mayor cinismo, hasta llegar al último círculo, paradigma excelso del mayor poder y la menor ética. Los residentes actuales representan la obsesión por el estatus, la competencia y la vanidad, y por esos sueños artificiales han perdido el alma, son apenas un espejo de la imagen que quieren proyectar.
"...Bueno, creo que se refería a entregar la parte de tí que te enseña quién eres...".
Esta ambientación sigue siendo actual a día de hoy y muestra la magnifica inteligencia de su autora.
Vamos conociendo las familias del barrio de la mano de los dos protagonistas, poetas y amigos desde la infancia, que recorren en los seis días de la narración los diferentes niveles haciendo trabajos aislados con los que conseguir algún dinero para Navidad, y este periplo que vendría a ser la trama principal y ya de por sí muy amena, se intercala con pasajes desde la perspectiva de la actual señora Needed, en una situación espeluznante, que avanza en la lectura de los registros de las anteriores señoras Needed… Todo ello sirve a la autora para ir mostrando una crítica soberbia sobre diferentes cuestiones de clase, racismo, materialismo, salud mental, feminismo, y diferencias de trato que vienen a sostener el mismo sistema creado por quienes se benefician de su existencia, sin ningún tipo de moral y ante la total pasividad de quienes participan de ese sistema.
Una crítica social magnífica en una narración divertida, elegante, con voz poética y repleta de simbolismo. Las posibilidades de ir buscando significados más profundos son infinitas.
Es la tercera novela que leo de Gloria Naylor y sin duda es una de las grandes autoras, con un estilo propio, reconocible en todas ellas, además de estar interconectadas con pequeños matices, que no son para nada imprescindibles para una lectura aislada, pero que enriquecen la narración y sobre todo la lectura, como un pequeño guiño a las novelas anteriores. Ya en Mama Day se hablaba de un hecho relevante en Linden Hills, y ahora hay un momento en el que aparece Miranda Day.
"...Bueno, creo que se refería a entregar la parte de tí que te enseña quién eres...".
Esta ambientación sigue siendo actual a día de hoy y muestra la magnifica inteligencia de su autora.
Vamos conociendo las familias del barrio de la mano de los dos protagonistas, poetas y amigos desde la infancia, que recorren en los seis días de la narración los diferentes niveles haciendo trabajos aislados con los que conseguir algún dinero para Navidad, y este periplo que vendría a ser la trama principal y ya de por sí muy amena, se intercala con pasajes desde la perspectiva de la actual señora Needed, en una situación espeluznante, que avanza en la lectura de los registros de las anteriores señoras Needed… Todo ello sirve a la autora para ir mostrando una crítica soberbia sobre diferentes cuestiones de clase, racismo, materialismo, salud mental, feminismo, y diferencias de trato que vienen a sostener el mismo sistema creado por quienes se benefician de su existencia, sin ningún tipo de moral y ante la total pasividad de quienes participan de ese sistema.
Una crítica social magnífica en una narración divertida, elegante, con voz poética y repleta de simbolismo. Las posibilidades de ir buscando significados más profundos son infinitas.
Es la tercera novela que leo de Gloria Naylor y sin duda es una de las grandes autoras, con un estilo propio, reconocible en todas ellas, además de estar interconectadas con pequeños matices, que no son para nada imprescindibles para una lectura aislada, pero que enriquecen la narración y sobre todo la lectura, como un pequeño guiño a las novelas anteriores. Ya en Mama Day se hablaba de un hecho relevante en Linden Hills, y ahora hay un momento en el que aparece Miranda Day.
January 6, 2025
Si un genio habitante de alguna remota lámpara nos concediera el deseo de resucitar, aunque fuera durante el ratito que pasas tomándote un café a algún autor o autora sea cual sea, sin duda alguna elegiríamos a Gloria Naylor. Tendría que ser un lujo pasar un rato con ella para comprender su forma de ver la vida. Es absolutamente impresionante la capacidad que tiene para hacer que cada palabra encierre mucho más de lo que a simple vista parece.
En Linden Hills, Gloria Naylor nos transforma el infierno de Dante Alighieri en un barrio de clase alta americano exclusivo para personas de color. Conoceremos a Willie y Lester, dos jóvenes poetas que al igual que Virgilio y Dante, serán los encargados de adentrarse en este barrio al que todo el mundo quiere pertenecer y que no está muy claro donde empieza y donde acaba para desentrañar los más oscuros secretos de las almas que allí habitan hasta llegar a la casa blanca del centro, la de la primera familia de propietarios de Linden Hills.
Cada historia es un pellizco al corazón. Una crítica mágica y bestial a su vez sobre la sociedad, las clases, el poder y la oscuridad que habita en el alma. Sobre como el diablo que puede vivir dentro de una persona también puede alimentarse de buenas acciones y transformarlas a su antojo en una herramienta destructiva o una cárcel de la que nadie se atreve a escapar por muy abiertas que se encuentren las puertas. A medida que vayamos superando los arcos en que se divide Linden Hills iremos descubriendo diferentes historias que nos harán replantearnos más de una vez el concepto que tenemos de la naturaleza humana.
Solo tienes que dejarte llevar, vestirte de trovador de los bajos fondos y acompañar a nuestros amigos hasta la casa blanca del centro del barrio y descubrir una historia que se quedará, como decía mi hermana de pequeña, para todos los siempre en tu corazón. También comprenderás por qué Linden Hills es el mejor libro de La Librería Ambulante de 2024. Te respondo yo y te hago un spoiler: Porque después de miles de libros leídos, aún hay historias que nos siguen dejando con la boca abierta y nos siguen recordando por qué un conjunto de palabras y silencios plasmados en unas pocas hojas de papel puede ser lo más mágico que ha creado nunca el ser humano.
Ganador del Ambulante Book Award 2024
https://www.lalibreriaambulante.es/es...
En Linden Hills, Gloria Naylor nos transforma el infierno de Dante Alighieri en un barrio de clase alta americano exclusivo para personas de color. Conoceremos a Willie y Lester, dos jóvenes poetas que al igual que Virgilio y Dante, serán los encargados de adentrarse en este barrio al que todo el mundo quiere pertenecer y que no está muy claro donde empieza y donde acaba para desentrañar los más oscuros secretos de las almas que allí habitan hasta llegar a la casa blanca del centro, la de la primera familia de propietarios de Linden Hills.
Cada historia es un pellizco al corazón. Una crítica mágica y bestial a su vez sobre la sociedad, las clases, el poder y la oscuridad que habita en el alma. Sobre como el diablo que puede vivir dentro de una persona también puede alimentarse de buenas acciones y transformarlas a su antojo en una herramienta destructiva o una cárcel de la que nadie se atreve a escapar por muy abiertas que se encuentren las puertas. A medida que vayamos superando los arcos en que se divide Linden Hills iremos descubriendo diferentes historias que nos harán replantearnos más de una vez el concepto que tenemos de la naturaleza humana.
Solo tienes que dejarte llevar, vestirte de trovador de los bajos fondos y acompañar a nuestros amigos hasta la casa blanca del centro del barrio y descubrir una historia que se quedará, como decía mi hermana de pequeña, para todos los siempre en tu corazón. También comprenderás por qué Linden Hills es el mejor libro de La Librería Ambulante de 2024. Te respondo yo y te hago un spoiler: Porque después de miles de libros leídos, aún hay historias que nos siguen dejando con la boca abierta y nos siguen recordando por qué un conjunto de palabras y silencios plasmados en unas pocas hojas de papel puede ser lo más mágico que ha creado nunca el ser humano.
Ganador del Ambulante Book Award 2024
https://www.lalibreriaambulante.es/es...
December 26, 2011
The reason i love this book (besides the fact it is written by my favorite author) is that it provides a class, gender, race dialogue to dante's inferno in a way that easier to understand than the classic novel. The parallels between Dante's spiral into hell and the books exploration into Linden Hills are at the forefront of the novel. It gives you a perspective into the mind of how African American thought mixes with the so-called traditional literary canons...the end is sort of dull although it is chuck full of action. the fire next time!
May 26, 2020
Quick thoughts: I wanted to love this book. I was a bit relieved to finish it. I didn't hate it. I actually enjoyed a fair amount of it. I found this moralistic story of affluence and Blackness to be strongest when we were with the characters Willie and Lester. They take us through the neighborhood of affluent Black folks (Linden Hills). As they descend into the neighborhood, working for different families to make extra money for the holidays, they introduce us to different characters who have lost touch with who they are (and what they want) at the expense of "making it."I found the subplot of the woman in the basement to be a bore. It felt like something that worked intellectually, but didn't have much feeling. Willie and Lester were wonderful and vibrant characters, and would have loved to stay with them, and stay in their perspective, longer.
March 3, 2024
No conocía a Gloria Naylor, pero tras las presentaciones literarias de Nódica Libros y escuchar a Diego, su editor, hablar de ella y comentar que, junto con Toni Morrison, son dos figuras indiscutibles de la literatura afroamericana contemporánea, sí o sí, tenía que descubrirla.
Una prosa de calidad, sin ninguna duda. Linden Hills es una curiosa historia sobre una colina que los blancos no querían y un negro supo ver su potencial «Siéntate ahí a esperar y te haré un hombre rico gracias a las dos cosas que todos tendrán que hacer: vivir y morir». Los Luther Nedeed son visionarios que se adaptan y juegan como los blancos, pero con más astucia.
Una novela que trata de muchas vidas, de una comunidad negra, de muchos personajes, como las narraciones de madres y amas de casa negras valiosas pero ausentes de los retratos, historias individuales, que recuperan su identidad a través de esta obra. Personajes que entran y salen de escena, que se cruzan y desaparecen, a veces, me líe. Crees que van a ser relevante y unos capítulos más tarde se diluyen dejándote con ganas de más.
No es una novela para leer a la ligera, hay una crítica sobre el capitalismo racial, pros y contras.
Una prosa de calidad, sin ninguna duda. Linden Hills es una curiosa historia sobre una colina que los blancos no querían y un negro supo ver su potencial «Siéntate ahí a esperar y te haré un hombre rico gracias a las dos cosas que todos tendrán que hacer: vivir y morir». Los Luther Nedeed son visionarios que se adaptan y juegan como los blancos, pero con más astucia.
Una novela que trata de muchas vidas, de una comunidad negra, de muchos personajes, como las narraciones de madres y amas de casa negras valiosas pero ausentes de los retratos, historias individuales, que recuperan su identidad a través de esta obra. Personajes que entran y salen de escena, que se cruzan y desaparecen, a veces, me líe. Crees que van a ser relevante y unos capítulos más tarde se diluyen dejándote con ganas de más.
No es una novela para leer a la ligera, hay una crítica sobre el capitalismo racial, pros y contras.
April 3, 2017
Gloria Naylor, author of The Women of Brewster Place, grants the world another chance to read why she's considered a literary champion. When I began reading Naylor's Linden Hills I was not familiar with her works nor had any inclination to be. Oh how foolish I have been all these years. I didn't realize until the last word that I missed her voice.
When I first requested Linden Hills for review it was simply because of the cover. I'm totally one of those people who judges books by their cover. I can't help it and I know I'm not alone in this matter. Once I was given access to the title, I realized I'd stumbled upon a true literary creation that I'd either get... or not get. Literary fiction always seems to intimidate me. I wonder if I'll "get" it. Will I have trudged along through masterful prose after masterful prose and simply not understand? Understanding literature in a more meaningful way is a community I desire to belong. I am similar to the people who desire to live in Linden Hills.
Linden Hills is known all over the Western world for being an exclusive community that all want to belong to. No one quite knows what the requirements are to getting in this neighborhood, but it is the creme de la creme of where to call home. Outsiders to this community see the opulence with envy. They are blind to the true, sad, disturbed existence that really lay in wait for a place that is so exclusive, yet always has an opening.
Our primary tour guides through this "heaven" on earth are Willie Lester. Two friends who are thicker than blood with each other. Although they are best friends, they are both very different. One glaring difference is that one lives in Linden Hills and the other lives in the neighboring town of Putney Wayne. Putney Wayne isn't exactly the place to be, or the place to be from. It's considered low although it looks down (geographically) on Linden Hills. The irony is not lost on anyone that the world's most happening place to call home is at the bottom of the hill, is not lost on me. And I'm surprised to be even that smart.
I guess my application into the Linden Hill's of reviewers looks slightly better.
Gloria Naylor's Linden Hill's is a contemporary take on Dante's Inferno. With Lester and Willie as our guides, we happen upon the nine circles of hell. We meet the people of Linden Hills and learn how their stories intertwine. Before long, it's obvious there's a heart and soul that is missing in Linden Hill's. Perhaps that heart and soul died generations ago when the first lease contract for a 1000 years was signed.
How's that for adding another bullet point into the exclusive reviewer's club. Sure, I could be a snarky, witty, or even completely dimwitted reviewer, but I want in!!! I want in although I don't know why. There's just something about this exclusive membership I have no choice but to attain.
Either way, Naylor had me glued to the pages of Linden Hill's and it saddened me to part with each character I met. On the surface they all seemed so real and it almost makes me mad that much of their stories were not perfectly sealed with some form of conclusion. But, their necessity on helping Lester, Willie, and us readers understand Linden Hill's better, and then ultimately ourselves isn't lost.
In conclusion, Linden Hills is actually my favorite book I've read this year so far. It surface hot buttons on race relations, poverty, prosperity, and the image we all want to portray are just a looking glass for the real point of this story. Whether my interpretation be right or wrong, I hope to never lose myself or my personal truth to conform to any "exclusive" faction at the cost of my soul. I think I'll just rescind my application and let it burn.
Copy provided by Open Road Media via Netgalley
When I first requested Linden Hills for review it was simply because of the cover. I'm totally one of those people who judges books by their cover. I can't help it and I know I'm not alone in this matter. Once I was given access to the title, I realized I'd stumbled upon a true literary creation that I'd either get... or not get. Literary fiction always seems to intimidate me. I wonder if I'll "get" it. Will I have trudged along through masterful prose after masterful prose and simply not understand? Understanding literature in a more meaningful way is a community I desire to belong. I am similar to the people who desire to live in Linden Hills.
Linden Hills is known all over the Western world for being an exclusive community that all want to belong to. No one quite knows what the requirements are to getting in this neighborhood, but it is the creme de la creme of where to call home. Outsiders to this community see the opulence with envy. They are blind to the true, sad, disturbed existence that really lay in wait for a place that is so exclusive, yet always has an opening.
Our primary tour guides through this "heaven" on earth are Willie Lester. Two friends who are thicker than blood with each other. Although they are best friends, they are both very different. One glaring difference is that one lives in Linden Hills and the other lives in the neighboring town of Putney Wayne. Putney Wayne isn't exactly the place to be, or the place to be from. It's considered low although it looks down (geographically) on Linden Hills. The irony is not lost on anyone that the world's most happening place to call home is at the bottom of the hill, is not lost on me. And I'm surprised to be even that smart.
I guess my application into the Linden Hill's of reviewers looks slightly better.
Gloria Naylor's Linden Hill's is a contemporary take on Dante's Inferno. With Lester and Willie as our guides, we happen upon the nine circles of hell. We meet the people of Linden Hills and learn how their stories intertwine. Before long, it's obvious there's a heart and soul that is missing in Linden Hill's. Perhaps that heart and soul died generations ago when the first lease contract for a 1000 years was signed.
How's that for adding another bullet point into the exclusive reviewer's club. Sure, I could be a snarky, witty, or even completely dimwitted reviewer, but I want in!!! I want in although I don't know why. There's just something about this exclusive membership I have no choice but to attain.
Either way, Naylor had me glued to the pages of Linden Hill's and it saddened me to part with each character I met. On the surface they all seemed so real and it almost makes me mad that much of their stories were not perfectly sealed with some form of conclusion. But, their necessity on helping Lester, Willie, and us readers understand Linden Hill's better, and then ultimately ourselves isn't lost.
In conclusion, Linden Hills is actually my favorite book I've read this year so far. It surface hot buttons on race relations, poverty, prosperity, and the image we all want to portray are just a looking glass for the real point of this story. Whether my interpretation be right or wrong, I hope to never lose myself or my personal truth to conform to any "exclusive" faction at the cost of my soul. I think I'll just rescind my application and let it burn.
Copy provided by Open Road Media via Netgalley
January 14, 2014
Back when I was in university (I believe that was about 5 minutes ago), I had a young professor who launched the first African-American Women's Literature at Western. It was a seminar course, and I couldn't wait until my 4th year when I'd be able to take it. And then, when I got there, it was offered in the same semester as another one I'd committed to, and I couldn't take it. I was devastated, but the prof gave me his syllabus so I could read along, and that's how I was introduced to Gloria Naylor. The book was Mama Day, and it was breathtaking. I've since read it two more times, along with Bailey's Cafe, The Women of Brewster Place, and the Men of Brewster Place. But the one book I have on my shelf that I'd never read was Linden Hills. "You don't have to sell your soul to live in Linden Hills," says the tagline on the cover, "you give it away, piece by piece." It's the story of a housing development built overlooking the cotton fields that once were filled with African-American slaves. The development is occupied by African-Americans who have come from all over America just to try to get a piece of this property, a way of showing that they've made it in the world and have overcome their pasts, and it's owned by a man named Luther Nedeed (and every generation's Luther has a son whom he names Luther, so the property always remains in the same name). Just reading the introduction I thought to myself, "Oh, Gloria, how I've missed you." Every word is like poetry, every hurt that someone feels is like a dagger through your own heart. She knows how to scrape the absolute bottom that humanity can reach, and yet show something beautiful in it. From the long introduction where we read an epic tale of the Nedeed family, culminating in the present-day Luther making a drastic move because he believes his wife has been unfaithful to him; to the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern characters, Willie and Lester, who are making their way through Linden Hills in the week leading up to Christmas, doing odd jobs for folks in an effort to save money for Christmas and thus moving in and out of all the other individual stories; to the history professor who's devoted his life to studying the social effects of living in Linden Hills; to the families of Linden Hills who moved there for a better life and found themselves drowning in it... this is such a sad, beautiful book. It's not uplifting, and there's very little hope eked out of these pages, but it's a book that will resonate with you long after you've finished.
August 30, 2024
Al principio estaba flipando, con las referencias a la divina comedia y ese feminismo tan genial pero a medida que avanzaba me quedaba con la sensación de que estaba esperando algo que no llegaba. El final me ha decepcionado bastante y se me ha hecho largo. Con todo creo es un libro genial pero tenía las expectativas muy altas 🫣
August 6, 2024
¿Qué es el éxito? ¿Quién determina que consideremos que alguien lo ha logrado?. Hoy en día hay muchos parámetros para medir si alguien está en la cresta de la ola o por debajo, com por ejemplo: los seguidores de Instagram, las vacaciones y viajes que se hagan, el coche que se conduzca, la casa que tenga, la ropa que lleve… medimos el éxito en cosas materiales sin importarnos el precio que se haya tenido que pagar por ellas. Cuanto más pagues por algo, más exclusivo es y más envidias desata. Pero, ¿dónde está el límite? ¿Estarías dispuesto a vender un pedazo de tu alma por conseguir prestigio y éxito?
Linden Hills es el vecindario donde todo el mundo quiere vivir. Una especie de urbanización exclusiva de gente negra, que desciende una colina. Las casas del nivel superior son consideradas de menor estatus, y las más caras y prestigiosas se encuentran más abajo, con la casa de Luther Needed (el descendiente del creador de Linden Hills) en la base de todo. ¿Te suena esta estructura, donde el éxito está en la parte inferior?. Gloria Naylor usa el esquema del Infierno de Dante en la Divina Comedia como estructura para Linden Hills y sus habitantes. Junto a nuestros guías, Lester y Willie (representaciones de Virgilio y Dante), iremos pasando por diferentes hogares de este peculiar vecindario para observar la depravación y la pasividad de sus habitantes. La autora hace así un profundo y magnífico estudio de clase, raza, prestigio y de la falsedad del sueño americano.
Aviso que no es una lectura ligera, ni tiene una trama directa, pero la narración es excelente, llena de metáforas y muy elegante. ¿Es necesario haber leído la parte del Infierno de Dante? Sí y no. Yo creo que se le saca muchísimo más partido si al menos se busca la información. Hay infinidad de artículos comparando los Arcos de Linden Hills con los Anillos del Infierno y creo que enriquece mucho la lectura saber algo de la obra de Dante para comprender las referencias del texto. Aún así, son historias diferentes y la autora no busca un retelling, si no que simplemente usa la estructura para realizar su propia crítica social.
Habla de conformismo, de pasividad, de salud mental, de raza, de clase, de prestigio, de materialismo, de sueños, de frustración… pero sobre todo habla de identidad y de nuestra decisión de abrazarla o de diluirla hasta que no quede nada de nosotros.
Una lectura perfectamente extrapolable al presente, que nos hace reflexionar sobre esas sonrisas que vemos a diario en redes sociales; esas máscaras de éxito que ocultan dolor, tristeza y mucha soledad.
Linden Hills es el vecindario donde todo el mundo quiere vivir. Una especie de urbanización exclusiva de gente negra, que desciende una colina. Las casas del nivel superior son consideradas de menor estatus, y las más caras y prestigiosas se encuentran más abajo, con la casa de Luther Needed (el descendiente del creador de Linden Hills) en la base de todo. ¿Te suena esta estructura, donde el éxito está en la parte inferior?. Gloria Naylor usa el esquema del Infierno de Dante en la Divina Comedia como estructura para Linden Hills y sus habitantes. Junto a nuestros guías, Lester y Willie (representaciones de Virgilio y Dante), iremos pasando por diferentes hogares de este peculiar vecindario para observar la depravación y la pasividad de sus habitantes. La autora hace así un profundo y magnífico estudio de clase, raza, prestigio y de la falsedad del sueño americano.
Aviso que no es una lectura ligera, ni tiene una trama directa, pero la narración es excelente, llena de metáforas y muy elegante. ¿Es necesario haber leído la parte del Infierno de Dante? Sí y no. Yo creo que se le saca muchísimo más partido si al menos se busca la información. Hay infinidad de artículos comparando los Arcos de Linden Hills con los Anillos del Infierno y creo que enriquece mucho la lectura saber algo de la obra de Dante para comprender las referencias del texto. Aún así, son historias diferentes y la autora no busca un retelling, si no que simplemente usa la estructura para realizar su propia crítica social.
Habla de conformismo, de pasividad, de salud mental, de raza, de clase, de prestigio, de materialismo, de sueños, de frustración… pero sobre todo habla de identidad y de nuestra decisión de abrazarla o de diluirla hasta que no quede nada de nosotros.
Una lectura perfectamente extrapolable al presente, que nos hace reflexionar sobre esas sonrisas que vemos a diario en redes sociales; esas máscaras de éxito que ocultan dolor, tristeza y mucha soledad.
August 29, 2008
This is the sort of book that should be required reading, especially for college-level literature courses. It paints a very believable picture of black upper-class life. The story itself was suspenseful and, at times, grotesque and heart-wrenching. Gloria Naylor really knows how to write about mental anguish - there were times when I had to put the book down. The ending was sad yet satisfying.
July 25, 2008
Many years ago, I was impressed by the Women of Brewster Place, Gloria Naylor's novel of vignettes about the Black residents of that fictional urban neighborhood. She revisits that universe to write about Linden Hills, a nearby wealthy subdivision. Linden Hills is Black America's Coto de Caza, a wealthy and exclusive community where residents don't own their homes but rather rent them for near-infinite terms from the descendant of the community's founder, Luther Nedeed.
Linden Hills, and the journey of the novel's two poet-protagonists, Willie and Lester, is a modern day Inferno in which the residents' hell is not externally imposed but rather of their own making. They have given up their identities, dreams, and real desires in order to live in the community. In the second circle of Linden Hills, a gay man marries a woman in order to further his career (an inversion of Dante's sin of lust); in the third circle an ambitious career man suppresses all of his natural desires, even to the point of severely restrict his diet to limit the unpleasantry of his bowels (this time an inverted form of gluttony), in order to feed his appetite for professional ambition.
The twists and turns of the characters had me not only dusting off my Inferno to read alongside Willie and Lester's journey down the hill, but also brushing up on classical mythology. It's an ambitious idea of which Naylor nevertheless manages the pacing perfectly: the story switches from the perspective of Willy to that of the wife of the newest of a long string of Luthers Nedeed.
Naylor's opinion of the wealthy professional Blacks of Linden Hills is not subtle. What remains more ambiguous throughout the book is what she sees as the lesson for her readers. Is the tale merely a warning, or is she pointing at a specific part of Black American society, whether geographical or categorical? Skin color is also employed to contrast the residents throughout the book; in general, the residents of the community seem to get lighter as the very dark skinned outsider Willy (who is nicknamed White, since he's so black that if he were one shade darker he'd have the pigmentation equivalent of an overflow error and circle back around to the whitest white) and the lighter skinned first-circle denizen Lester progress through the subdivision. At the very bottom of the hill, we learn that the youngest Nedeed son has been born with white skin, a sign that his father takes to indicate his wife's infidelity.
Is Naylor saying that these characters have denied their racial heritage so much they're becoming white as they descend through the Hills? It remains a bit ambiguous, and what glimpses of white characters we see filter into the story are not flattering.
In any case, the story is thought-provoking and meticulously constructed, while still being a totally engrossing novel.
Linden Hills, and the journey of the novel's two poet-protagonists, Willie and Lester, is a modern day Inferno in which the residents' hell is not externally imposed but rather of their own making. They have given up their identities, dreams, and real desires in order to live in the community. In the second circle of Linden Hills, a gay man marries a woman in order to further his career (an inversion of Dante's sin of lust); in the third circle an ambitious career man suppresses all of his natural desires, even to the point of severely restrict his diet to limit the unpleasantry of his bowels (this time an inverted form of gluttony), in order to feed his appetite for professional ambition.
The twists and turns of the characters had me not only dusting off my Inferno to read alongside Willie and Lester's journey down the hill, but also brushing up on classical mythology. It's an ambitious idea of which Naylor nevertheless manages the pacing perfectly: the story switches from the perspective of Willy to that of the wife of the newest of a long string of Luthers Nedeed.
Naylor's opinion of the wealthy professional Blacks of Linden Hills is not subtle. What remains more ambiguous throughout the book is what she sees as the lesson for her readers. Is the tale merely a warning, or is she pointing at a specific part of Black American society, whether geographical or categorical? Skin color is also employed to contrast the residents throughout the book; in general, the residents of the community seem to get lighter as the very dark skinned outsider Willy (who is nicknamed White, since he's so black that if he were one shade darker he'd have the pigmentation equivalent of an overflow error and circle back around to the whitest white) and the lighter skinned first-circle denizen Lester progress through the subdivision. At the very bottom of the hill, we learn that the youngest Nedeed son has been born with white skin, a sign that his father takes to indicate his wife's infidelity.
Is Naylor saying that these characters have denied their racial heritage so much they're becoming white as they descend through the Hills? It remains a bit ambiguous, and what glimpses of white characters we see filter into the story are not flattering.
In any case, the story is thought-provoking and meticulously constructed, while still being a totally engrossing novel.
January 20, 2025
"—¿Adónde quieres ir a parar, Mierda?
—A las vallas, Blanco, a las vallas. Incluso en la universidad hay unas vallas enormes de piedra. ¿Y por qué? Si las puertas están abiertas, entonces no es para tener a nadie encerrado. ¿Por qué esas vallas? —Miró el rostro impasible de su amigo—. Pues para que te hagas a la idea de que lo que tienen ahí es distinto y especial. Algo que hay que separar del resto del mundo. Así te acorralan, tío, ¿lo pillas? Como te han encerrado de los seis a los veintiséis años, después ya pueden dejarte salir, porque estás listo para creer que lo que te han dado ahí, su versión de la vida, es especial. Y, después, tú mismo te encierras y te proteges de todos los que están ahí fuera."
Willie y Lester, también conocidos como Blanco y Mierda, son dos amigos veinteañeros que quieren ser poetas. Mientras esperan que la gloria artística llame a su puerta, van tirando a base de trabajillos aquí y allá, comidas en casa de mamá y paraísos artificiales. Lester vive en la zona más pobre de un barrio súper raro llamado Linden Hills, donde las calles se llaman Arcos y conforme vas acercándote al núcleo duro, Tupelo Drive, más poder y chunguez te encuentras a tu paso. Como los círculos del infierno de Dante pero en barrio residencial de la América profunda. Un barrio fundado por la familia Needed acabada la guerra civil norteamericana y en el que Luther Needed senior pensaba meter a lo mejorcito de la sociedad negra, una élite capaz de medirse de igual a igual con los blancos que les rodeaban pero sin mezclarse. Segregación racial al revés. La abuela se Lester, propietaria por mil años y un día (en este libro es todo muy loco) de una casa en el arco más alejado de Linden Hills, es la única que no estaba de acuerdo con tanta absurdez de clase alta y coches de lujo, ella quería una casa en la que meter a su familia y vivir su vida. Esta filosofía sólo la heredó Lester, que con Willie, se dedicarán la semana antes de Navidad a hacer de camareros, transportistas, decoradores y paño de lágrimas en varios casoplones del barrio para ganarse unos dinerillos extra en esas fechas tan señaladas.
Ya os advierto que al final, preferirían haberse quedado en su casa. El nivel de podredumbre de esa gente es tal, que nuestros héroes tienen que salir por patas de la última casa.
Gloria Naylor sólo escribió seis novelas, siendo Linden Hills la segunda, que publicó en los ochenta. Se nota que es de esa época por las marcas, la decoración y las costumbres que describe, pero eso no ha envejecido mal, la historia es atemporal. En toda la historia siempre ha habido gente capaz de lo que sea por llegar a lo más alto y una vez allí, seguir haciendo lo peor para mantenerse.
—A las vallas, Blanco, a las vallas. Incluso en la universidad hay unas vallas enormes de piedra. ¿Y por qué? Si las puertas están abiertas, entonces no es para tener a nadie encerrado. ¿Por qué esas vallas? —Miró el rostro impasible de su amigo—. Pues para que te hagas a la idea de que lo que tienen ahí es distinto y especial. Algo que hay que separar del resto del mundo. Así te acorralan, tío, ¿lo pillas? Como te han encerrado de los seis a los veintiséis años, después ya pueden dejarte salir, porque estás listo para creer que lo que te han dado ahí, su versión de la vida, es especial. Y, después, tú mismo te encierras y te proteges de todos los que están ahí fuera."
Willie y Lester, también conocidos como Blanco y Mierda, son dos amigos veinteañeros que quieren ser poetas. Mientras esperan que la gloria artística llame a su puerta, van tirando a base de trabajillos aquí y allá, comidas en casa de mamá y paraísos artificiales. Lester vive en la zona más pobre de un barrio súper raro llamado Linden Hills, donde las calles se llaman Arcos y conforme vas acercándote al núcleo duro, Tupelo Drive, más poder y chunguez te encuentras a tu paso. Como los círculos del infierno de Dante pero en barrio residencial de la América profunda. Un barrio fundado por la familia Needed acabada la guerra civil norteamericana y en el que Luther Needed senior pensaba meter a lo mejorcito de la sociedad negra, una élite capaz de medirse de igual a igual con los blancos que les rodeaban pero sin mezclarse. Segregación racial al revés. La abuela se Lester, propietaria por mil años y un día (en este libro es todo muy loco) de una casa en el arco más alejado de Linden Hills, es la única que no estaba de acuerdo con tanta absurdez de clase alta y coches de lujo, ella quería una casa en la que meter a su familia y vivir su vida. Esta filosofía sólo la heredó Lester, que con Willie, se dedicarán la semana antes de Navidad a hacer de camareros, transportistas, decoradores y paño de lágrimas en varios casoplones del barrio para ganarse unos dinerillos extra en esas fechas tan señaladas.
Ya os advierto que al final, preferirían haberse quedado en su casa. El nivel de podredumbre de esa gente es tal, que nuestros héroes tienen que salir por patas de la última casa.
Gloria Naylor sólo escribió seis novelas, siendo Linden Hills la segunda, que publicó en los ochenta. Se nota que es de esa época por las marcas, la decoración y las costumbres que describe, pero eso no ha envejecido mal, la historia es atemporal. En toda la historia siempre ha habido gente capaz de lo que sea por llegar a lo más alto y una vez allí, seguir haciendo lo peor para mantenerse.
October 29, 2017
I really do not know what to say about this book. It will stick with me for a long time.
April 9, 2017
Please read all of my reviews at http://ultraviolentlit.blogspot.ca!
Linden Hills was originally published in 1985, and yet it feels so modern and current – it could easily be a satirical reference to race relations in America today. It is the story of an affluent African-American neighbourhood that becomes a symbol of success for its residents. Living in Linden Hills is the highest achievement they can imagine, but getting there is not good enough – one must always strive to move lower down the hill to the wealthiest homes. In this way, Naylor’s novel mirrors Dante’s Inferno, and the descent into hell. As status increases, so does the emptiness within.
The novel begins by describing how Linden Hills came to be. A black man named Luther Needed bought the land from white men who thought they were offloading undesirable property. However, Luther managed to turn the land into a powerful symbol for its black residents – a neighbourhood where they could be successful in their own right, outside of the constraints of segregation and poverty surrounding them. The original inhabitants of Linden Hills strived to create an inclusive space, but now their descendants are obsessed with status, at the risk of their souls.
Rumours abound that the original Luther Needed sold his wife and child into slavery in order to purchase the land that would become Linden Hills. Now, his great-grandson and de facto leader of the Hills – also called Luther Needed – struggles with the equally unsavoury rumours that surround him. We view the neighourhood through the eyes of two teenage boys, who ramble around Linden Hills, looking for odd jobs to do. Willie comes from a poor family living nearby, while Lester grew up in the Hills. As they move throughout the community, the boys contrast their perspectives and learn shocking secrets about the people they thought they knew.
More than an allegory for the modern descent into hell, Linden Hills is an analysis of the American dream and its consequences. It examines the dangers of conformity and the damages of progress. Using white standards as a measure of conformity, the residents of this black community compromise their real desires in order to show the outer world a certain image.
The individual lives of the people of Linden Hills are told like short stories that can almost stand on their own, although Naylor weaves them together with impressive skill. The ending, for Luther and the others, feels inevitable, but certainly not uplifting. This is a socioeconomic study of race, class and gender, steeped in a gritty version of reality. The inhabitants of Linden Hills escaped from a history of slavery and segregation, only to fall into the self-imposed slavery of wealth and status, where nothing is ever good enough. This is a novel I will be thinking about for awhile, and it should be considered required reading in today’s political climate.
I received this book from Open Road Media and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Linden Hills was originally published in 1985, and yet it feels so modern and current – it could easily be a satirical reference to race relations in America today. It is the story of an affluent African-American neighbourhood that becomes a symbol of success for its residents. Living in Linden Hills is the highest achievement they can imagine, but getting there is not good enough – one must always strive to move lower down the hill to the wealthiest homes. In this way, Naylor’s novel mirrors Dante’s Inferno, and the descent into hell. As status increases, so does the emptiness within.
The novel begins by describing how Linden Hills came to be. A black man named Luther Needed bought the land from white men who thought they were offloading undesirable property. However, Luther managed to turn the land into a powerful symbol for its black residents – a neighbourhood where they could be successful in their own right, outside of the constraints of segregation and poverty surrounding them. The original inhabitants of Linden Hills strived to create an inclusive space, but now their descendants are obsessed with status, at the risk of their souls.
Rumours abound that the original Luther Needed sold his wife and child into slavery in order to purchase the land that would become Linden Hills. Now, his great-grandson and de facto leader of the Hills – also called Luther Needed – struggles with the equally unsavoury rumours that surround him. We view the neighourhood through the eyes of two teenage boys, who ramble around Linden Hills, looking for odd jobs to do. Willie comes from a poor family living nearby, while Lester grew up in the Hills. As they move throughout the community, the boys contrast their perspectives and learn shocking secrets about the people they thought they knew.
More than an allegory for the modern descent into hell, Linden Hills is an analysis of the American dream and its consequences. It examines the dangers of conformity and the damages of progress. Using white standards as a measure of conformity, the residents of this black community compromise their real desires in order to show the outer world a certain image.
The individual lives of the people of Linden Hills are told like short stories that can almost stand on their own, although Naylor weaves them together with impressive skill. The ending, for Luther and the others, feels inevitable, but certainly not uplifting. This is a socioeconomic study of race, class and gender, steeped in a gritty version of reality. The inhabitants of Linden Hills escaped from a history of slavery and segregation, only to fall into the self-imposed slavery of wealth and status, where nothing is ever good enough. This is a novel I will be thinking about for awhile, and it should be considered required reading in today’s political climate.
I received this book from Open Road Media and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
June 13, 2017
Strangely enough, I happened to start reading this book on December 19th, the same day that Willie and Lester begin their descent into Linden Hills. I read everything else on the date it happened, except for the last day (Christmas Eve) because I didn't want the holiday to get in the way of it.
Linden Hills is another absolutely unmistakable Gloria Naylor work - there's the archetypal isolated setting at the fringes of reality and fantasy, the brilliant riffing on classic literature (doing to Inferno what Mama Day did to The Tempest), the enumeration and compounding of so many individual lives, and the slow but sure encroachment of the grotesque. I now feel pretty familiar now with her own world that is fleshed out through her partially overlapping novels. Here, the neighborhood Brewster Place and the ex-Linden-Hills-dweller Kiswana Browne are mentioned in passing, as is Mrs. Nedeed's Aunt Miranda Day, which builds on the latent knowledge I picked up about Linden Hills from the other books before I knew how they were intertwined. I'll have to re-read Bailey's Café to see if and how that fits in.
This is definitely the funniest book I've read by her. Willie and Lester are brilliant characters and I laughed out loud on multiple occasions during their conversations. The Satanesque figure of extremely wealthy community patriarch and mortician Luther Nedeed (all generations) is also perfectly creepy and detestable, and alternately, darkly comical and almost pathetic. Willa's reading of the records of all the former Mrs. Nedeed's made for some of the most harrowing passages in the novel, and the slowly hardening child's corpse provided the appropriate amount of disgust. The other thing is, Linden Hills is from the onset more sinister than any of her other novels, mostly seen through Willie's distrust and suspicion of the affluent neighborhood and its leader - you always feel like SOMETHING awful is about to happen... and then when it comes you're never sure if it's THE awful thing.
In the end, it solidifies the fact that Gloria Naylor is my new favorite author.
Linden Hills is another absolutely unmistakable Gloria Naylor work - there's the archetypal isolated setting at the fringes of reality and fantasy, the brilliant riffing on classic literature (doing to Inferno what Mama Day did to The Tempest), the enumeration and compounding of so many individual lives, and the slow but sure encroachment of the grotesque. I now feel pretty familiar now with her own world that is fleshed out through her partially overlapping novels. Here, the neighborhood Brewster Place and the ex-Linden-Hills-dweller Kiswana Browne are mentioned in passing, as is Mrs. Nedeed's Aunt Miranda Day, which builds on the latent knowledge I picked up about Linden Hills from the other books before I knew how they were intertwined. I'll have to re-read Bailey's Café to see if and how that fits in.
This is definitely the funniest book I've read by her. Willie and Lester are brilliant characters and I laughed out loud on multiple occasions during their conversations. The Satanesque figure of extremely wealthy community patriarch and mortician Luther Nedeed (all generations) is also perfectly creepy and detestable, and alternately, darkly comical and almost pathetic. Willa's reading of the records of all the former Mrs. Nedeed's made for some of the most harrowing passages in the novel, and the slowly hardening child's corpse provided the appropriate amount of disgust. The other thing is, Linden Hills is from the onset more sinister than any of her other novels, mostly seen through Willie's distrust and suspicion of the affluent neighborhood and its leader - you always feel like SOMETHING awful is about to happen... and then when it comes you're never sure if it's THE awful thing.
In the end, it solidifies the fact that Gloria Naylor is my new favorite author.
May 9, 2021
I have got to come to better terms with these endings!!! They throw me off each and every time.
Earlier on in the story: lots of timely commentary on the Faustian bargains of the Black middle class. I enjoy Naylor’s vignettes of different characters who form the composite character of a neighborhood (or in this case, a master-planned subdivision.)
I took notes and have a meme idea so I will try to flesh out my review when I am fully recovered from my second vaccine.
Earlier on in the story: lots of timely commentary on the Faustian bargains of the Black middle class. I enjoy Naylor’s vignettes of different characters who form the composite character of a neighborhood (or in this case, a master-planned subdivision.)
I took notes and have a meme idea so I will try to flesh out my review when I am fully recovered from my second vaccine.
May 10, 2023
The writing in this novel is stellar, but I did not enjoy reading this is as much as Naylor's other work. The individual stories of the Linden Hills residents were riveting (Naylor's strengths always shine through in this respect), but the storyline following Nedeed's wife made me want to put this book away several times.
Great book, but not an enjoyable reading experience.
Great book, but not an enjoyable reading experience.
March 26, 2025
Si os gustó Be Loved, Pedro Páramo y similares, este es vuestro libro. Misterioso, muy, muy inquietante y francamente bueno.
Me hubiera gustado saber mucho más de las mujeres Needed.
Me hubiera gustado saber mucho más de las mujeres Needed.
November 23, 2022
It’s hard for me not to love a novel when it’s premise is descending into Hell.
Naylor descriptions are A+++. I was just hoping for a little more explanation behind Nedeed’s personal psyche, not just his patriarchal legacy of evil. And what about Willie and Lester, are they going to be okay?
Naylor descriptions are A+++. I was just hoping for a little more explanation behind Nedeed’s personal psyche, not just his patriarchal legacy of evil. And what about Willie and Lester, are they going to be okay?
February 8, 2022
Hell is the middle class
May 19, 2015
“The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
- Toni Morrison
I've read The Women of Brewster Place and some of Mama Day so I was excited to find this book at The Strand for $1.
The novel follows Willie who is not from Linden Hills by the adjacent lower income neighborhood and his friend Lester who is from one of the original families of Linden Hills. The two are working in Linden Hills for the week in order to get some holiday money. They venture into the homes of various Linden Hills residents and their journey gets stranger and darker the further they journey down into Linden Hills. (The novel is inspired by Dante's Inferno.)
The opening is killer. Naylor gives us a brief history of Linden Hills which is said to have been founded with money Luther Nedeed received from selling his own wife and child into slavery. He buys the land from white men who believe they've tricked him by giving him awful land. They quickly learn that Nedeed may have other plans for the land and despite their jealousy they leave him alone because there's something…creepy about him. We learn that Nedeed has plans to create a neighborhood of Black people. A neighborhood he hopes to be a "beautiful Black was of spit right in the eye of white America." I won't say too much about the opening so as not to ruin it for you but it's sinister, passionate, and speaks a lot of truths about how some Black people feel about the way Black America is represented and about what we need to do to uplift the race. It set up immediately that I was about to be pulled into the world of Black people who are driven to chase the American Dream in order to prove something to the community and those who look down on us.
The entire novel is an indictment of the ways in which some upper class Black people make deals with devil when they live by the white gaze and not only forget who they are but revile who they are and where they come from. It's about the emotional barrenness that comes from living out the aforementioned Toni Morrison quote; they are always looking to the next thing in order to ascend to a place where their race is no longer a blemish or an embarrassment to them and they are never actually living.
It's also about how women in particular are swallowed whole by this pressure to assimilate. They are used as pawns by the Black men who either use them for sex but would only consider marrying white women or who use them in some misguided attempt to create a Black relationship or family that is a "credit" to the race. They also find themselves very lonely.
Linden Hills is a fascinating and disturbing novel. I suggest you check it out along with Naylor's other work!
- Toni Morrison
I've read The Women of Brewster Place and some of Mama Day so I was excited to find this book at The Strand for $1.
The novel follows Willie who is not from Linden Hills by the adjacent lower income neighborhood and his friend Lester who is from one of the original families of Linden Hills. The two are working in Linden Hills for the week in order to get some holiday money. They venture into the homes of various Linden Hills residents and their journey gets stranger and darker the further they journey down into Linden Hills. (The novel is inspired by Dante's Inferno.)
The opening is killer. Naylor gives us a brief history of Linden Hills which is said to have been founded with money Luther Nedeed received from selling his own wife and child into slavery. He buys the land from white men who believe they've tricked him by giving him awful land. They quickly learn that Nedeed may have other plans for the land and despite their jealousy they leave him alone because there's something…creepy about him. We learn that Nedeed has plans to create a neighborhood of Black people. A neighborhood he hopes to be a "beautiful Black was of spit right in the eye of white America." I won't say too much about the opening so as not to ruin it for you but it's sinister, passionate, and speaks a lot of truths about how some Black people feel about the way Black America is represented and about what we need to do to uplift the race. It set up immediately that I was about to be pulled into the world of Black people who are driven to chase the American Dream in order to prove something to the community and those who look down on us.
The entire novel is an indictment of the ways in which some upper class Black people make deals with devil when they live by the white gaze and not only forget who they are but revile who they are and where they come from. It's about the emotional barrenness that comes from living out the aforementioned Toni Morrison quote; they are always looking to the next thing in order to ascend to a place where their race is no longer a blemish or an embarrassment to them and they are never actually living.
It's also about how women in particular are swallowed whole by this pressure to assimilate. They are used as pawns by the Black men who either use them for sex but would only consider marrying white women or who use them in some misguided attempt to create a Black relationship or family that is a "credit" to the race. They also find themselves very lonely.
Linden Hills is a fascinating and disturbing novel. I suggest you check it out along with Naylor's other work!
April 3, 2017
Linden Hills follows two would-be street poets, lifelong friends from different sides of the tracks, as they work their way through the titular community, an upscale black neighborhood where old heartache and suburban malaise lie beneath the veneer of affluence. Partially an exploration of the complex social stratification in the black community and part gothic horror built on allusions to Dante's Inferno, this is a novel that leaves a strong overall impression despite some missteps along the way.
Wille "White" Mason and Lester "Shit" Tilson, both in serious need of Christmas cash, begin working a series of odd jobs around Linden Hills. As they work there way down into the Hills, the homes get more extravagant and the lives of the residents they encounter grow more desperate. Their descent into the bowels of Linden Hills puts them on a collision course with Luther Nedeed, whose family has presided over the neighborhood for generations. Nedeed provides the novel with its one true villain and the depravity that lends Linden Hills, its epic darkness.
Since Willie and Lester's tour brings them into contact with an ensemble cast of characters, the novel is often at the mercy of those characters with varying degrees of success. While Naylor's writing in generally top-notch throughout, her command of her characters sometimes slips. Some of the characterizations here, most notably the upwardly mobile Maxwell, are so over-the-top that they border on satire. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't at odds with the tone of the rest of the novel, built on taught psychological realism.
A few missteps aside, however, this is a novel that resonates after the last page, and its a substantial achievement.
Wille "White" Mason and Lester "Shit" Tilson, both in serious need of Christmas cash, begin working a series of odd jobs around Linden Hills. As they work there way down into the Hills, the homes get more extravagant and the lives of the residents they encounter grow more desperate. Their descent into the bowels of Linden Hills puts them on a collision course with Luther Nedeed, whose family has presided over the neighborhood for generations. Nedeed provides the novel with its one true villain and the depravity that lends Linden Hills, its epic darkness.
Since Willie and Lester's tour brings them into contact with an ensemble cast of characters, the novel is often at the mercy of those characters with varying degrees of success. While Naylor's writing in generally top-notch throughout, her command of her characters sometimes slips. Some of the characterizations here, most notably the upwardly mobile Maxwell, are so over-the-top that they border on satire. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't at odds with the tone of the rest of the novel, built on taught psychological realism.
A few missteps aside, however, this is a novel that resonates after the last page, and its a substantial achievement.
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