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Philadelphia Fire
From “one of America’s premier writers of fiction” (New York Times) comes this novel inspired by the 1985 police bombing of a West Philadelphia row house owned by the back-to-nature, Afrocentric cult known as Move. The bombing killed eleven people and started a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the center of the story is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and his search for the lone survivor of the fire — a young boy who was seen running from the flames.
An impassioned, brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America, "Philadelphia Fire isn't a book you read so much as one you breathe" (San Francsisco Chronicle).
An impassioned, brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America, "Philadelphia Fire isn't a book you read so much as one you breathe" (San Francsisco Chronicle).
210 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1990
40 people are currently reading
1677 people want to read
About the author
John Edgar Wideman
95 books408 followersA widely-celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. In 2000 he won the O. Henry Award for his short story "Weight", published in The Callaloo Journal.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
December 7, 2016
I think that this is an unrecognized masterpiece. Basic, and yes I agree thin, plot line is the main character Cudjoe comes back to Philadelphia from self-imposed exile to look for a boy who survived a bombing of a row house in West Philly. The house was bombed by city officials to eradicate an Afrocentric group called MOVE. The bombing was a real historical event and I have to admit that's what first drew me to the book.
But rather than being disappointed by the book's divergence into other subplots I was fascinated. Wideman is a master of so many voices - the young, the old, female, the oppressed, the coddled. I was reading an article about the genius of Lin Manuel Miranda and his mastery of so many types of language, so much of the stew that is any large city in this country. Wideman is of the same ilk.
This is a book that deserves multiple reads. I might even send it to Miranda :-) but then again he's probably already read it.
But rather than being disappointed by the book's divergence into other subplots I was fascinated. Wideman is a master of so many voices - the young, the old, female, the oppressed, the coddled. I was reading an article about the genius of Lin Manuel Miranda and his mastery of so many types of language, so much of the stew that is any large city in this country. Wideman is of the same ilk.
This is a book that deserves multiple reads. I might even send it to Miranda :-) but then again he's probably already read it.
September 22, 2012
This should have been a better book. Ostensibly about the police bombing of the MOVE headquarters in West Philly, 1985, Wideman devotes only about 40 pages of the novel to the event and the people involved. There's a rambling take on a production of the The Tempest, a businessman's suicide, rat shooting, and Mykonos, with some solid descriptions of basketball and Philly itself, but after the first few dozen pages Wideman apparently loses interest in his chief topic and then circuitously wanders back to it for a cursory finale. Wideman's a Penn grad too, and this bombing took place on 62nd and Osage, a mile and a half from where I lived, so it all lined up for me to grasp this novel on several levels, but the writing just wasn't there. Women in the novel exist solely to be lusted after and a strange anti-Semitic few pages and the whitewashing of MOVE's ugly side - police murder, subhuman living conditions, Koreshian cultism and the fascist belief that 'We're right and everyone else is wrong' - discredit the narrative. Two Cities is a very good novel, but Philadelphia Fire and The Cattle Killing can be safely skipped.
i-want-money
January 30, 2016Is this event at all alive in the Political Imagination of US citizens?
Police Terrorism from 1985 ; the bombing of an African=American Community in West Philly--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eHpR...
[this is how the boss tells the story, ie Frontline ; so you might suspect how much deeper it goes....]
The more things Don't Change, the more they stay the same...
Police Terrorism from 1985 ; the bombing of an African=American Community in West Philly--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eHpR...
[this is how the boss tells the story, ie Frontline ; so you might suspect how much deeper it goes....]
The more things Don't Change, the more they stay the same...
August 27, 2022
There were scenes in this novel that were very engaging, but they were few. There was little character development and little plot. There is a fundamental rhythm to the writing that I like and admire, but with very little else to hold it together, I could only look forward to when this would be over. Based on the writing and what I have read about some of the author's works, I will try something else of his, but can't recommend this.
February 4, 2019
It's too bad most readers, even the kind who zoom through books upon books of quality fiction, will never read a book of literary criticism. Ten years ago I read Madhu Dubey's book Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism and still to this day it's a book that works on my imagination and shapes my reading list. In fact had I not read that book, which I'm quite sure now I initially bought because of its attractive cover, not because an overriding interest in its subjects, I would have never read Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, a book that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Nor would I have read John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire, a book that, while it meets the criteria of being black literary postmodernism, is far less accomplished than Whitehead's. My main complaint is the disconnected nature of the book's three narrative parts, but even within each, there are flaws related to plotting, characterization, and motivation. The best part of the book is its black-American urban vernacular prose, which does a great job evoking the 1980s. It's most intensely rendered in Wideman's description of a pick-up basketball game in a north Philly park.
If the book is truly intended to evoke the meaning of blackness in America, and I'm skeptical that was Wideman's intention, it doesn't do a good job of it. Yes there's reference to the MOVE tragedy in which eleven people lost their lives, there's reference to the divides of social class that exist within the black-American community, and a number of different allusions to the challenges that the urban underclass faces. A much stronger theme that emerges, and this is one of the themes touched upon in Dubey's book, is the rot of the inner city. I use rot intentionally, nodding to the organic imagery which Wideman uses to accentuate the living nature of the city. Even so, it's not so interesting a theme to make the book one I could in good faith recommend. (C) Jeffrey L. Otto, February 3, 2019
Nor would I have read John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire, a book that, while it meets the criteria of being black literary postmodernism, is far less accomplished than Whitehead's. My main complaint is the disconnected nature of the book's three narrative parts, but even within each, there are flaws related to plotting, characterization, and motivation. The best part of the book is its black-American urban vernacular prose, which does a great job evoking the 1980s. It's most intensely rendered in Wideman's description of a pick-up basketball game in a north Philly park.
If the book is truly intended to evoke the meaning of blackness in America, and I'm skeptical that was Wideman's intention, it doesn't do a good job of it. Yes there's reference to the MOVE tragedy in which eleven people lost their lives, there's reference to the divides of social class that exist within the black-American community, and a number of different allusions to the challenges that the urban underclass faces. A much stronger theme that emerges, and this is one of the themes touched upon in Dubey's book, is the rot of the inner city. I use rot intentionally, nodding to the organic imagery which Wideman uses to accentuate the living nature of the city. Even so, it's not so interesting a theme to make the book one I could in good faith recommend. (C) Jeffrey L. Otto, February 3, 2019
November 10, 2011
John Edgar Wideman's work is unparalleled in his generation. His lyrical prose, executed in a virtuoso stylistic range that might fairly be characterized as T. S. Eliot in Trenchtown, serves as a vehicle for searching inquiries into personal identity that have won him two PEN/Faulkner awards. If I could sit down to dinner with one living author, Wideman would be the man.
March 16, 2018
the writing is pretty good, but this book has some problems. i would have appreciated a return to MOVE, and goddamn is this book misogynistic and gross.
June 9, 2018
Too much yin, not enough yang
March 6, 2018
Much like the event that it orbits but never actually addresses, Philadelphia Fire is a disorienting mess. Anyone looking for an insight into the devastating 1985 bombing of a Philadelphia neighborhood by city officials, or perhaps a fictionalized, coherent narrative of the main characters in that instance, will want to avoid this book. I'm sorry but that is not what Wideman has written here. If instead you want to dive into a feverish, disjointed maelstrom of grief and confusion and come out the other side frustrated and upset then yes, read Philadelphia Fire. Fair warning: you will have to cringe and squirm your way through a large amount of sexism and objectification of women and young girls, essentially forgiving the unforgivable just to get from cover to cover. Despite it's flaws, of which there are many, Philadelphia Fire is still the closest we have come to having a fictionalized retelling of the MOVE bombing by a respected literary figure. For this reason, I would say that this book is worth the read, if the subject interests you. Wideman succeeds in reminding us that the implications of the Philadelphia Fire are still there to be reckoned with, even if the flames are sometimes just beyond our line of sight.
February 15, 2024
I had a pretty miserable time reading this novel. I wanted to like it, and I found the underlying concepts fascinating--the historical atrocity at its center, the connections with The Tempest--but it just felt... aggressively avant-garde. Overaggressively. Inaccessibly. A good alternate title might be OOPS! All Fragments! I don't DNF books very often, but I probably would have DNFed this one if I hadn't been assigned to read it for a class.
For well over half the novel, I would have been hard-pressed to tell you what the heck was going on. I could give you a list of things that seemed to have occurred (Cudjoe returns from Mykonos to learn and write about the real-world fire that devastated his home neighborhood in Philly, he interviews someone connected with the organization targeted in the fire, he tries to find a boy who survived the attack, he plays some basketball, he reveals he may actually be some fictionalized version of Wideman, he tries and fails to stage a production of Shakespeare's play with inner-city kids, a homeless guy takes over the narration for a while and witnesses a suicide, he [Cudjoe?] goes to a poorly attended commemoration of the victims of the fire), but enormous chunks of the novel felt like long, unnecessary, dare-I-say egotistical drum solos between these far-too-occasional hooks.
I'm completely ready to admit the possibility/likelihood that Wideman is doing great work here and that it just wasn't for me – either due to my mindset while reading it or my more general predilections as a reader. I understand that, on some level, he probably wanted his readers to feel frustrated, that there's a realness to that, etc etc. But for now at least, this is not one I'd recommend.
Oh, it's also kinda grossly oversexualized... pretty much nonstop. I'm no prude, but, y'know. Ick.
For well over half the novel, I would have been hard-pressed to tell you what the heck was going on. I could give you a list of things that seemed to have occurred (Cudjoe returns from Mykonos to learn and write about the real-world fire that devastated his home neighborhood in Philly, he interviews someone connected with the organization targeted in the fire, he tries to find a boy who survived the attack, he plays some basketball, he reveals he may actually be some fictionalized version of Wideman, he tries and fails to stage a production of Shakespeare's play with inner-city kids, a homeless guy takes over the narration for a while and witnesses a suicide, he [Cudjoe?] goes to a poorly attended commemoration of the victims of the fire), but enormous chunks of the novel felt like long, unnecessary, dare-I-say egotistical drum solos between these far-too-occasional hooks.
I'm completely ready to admit the possibility/likelihood that Wideman is doing great work here and that it just wasn't for me – either due to my mindset while reading it or my more general predilections as a reader. I understand that, on some level, he probably wanted his readers to feel frustrated, that there's a realness to that, etc etc. But for now at least, this is not one I'd recommend.
Oh, it's also kinda grossly oversexualized... pretty much nonstop. I'm no prude, but, y'know. Ick.
April 22, 2015
"Philadelphia Fire" is an enormously frustrating book. The dust jacket of this book would have you believe that it is a novel about the MOVE incident that occurred in Philadelphia in 1985. In that incident the Philadelphia police firebombed a house occupied by members of a black radical religious group. John Edgar Wideman, a tremendously talented writer from Philadelphia with a keen understanding of issues of race would seem to be ideally suited to take on this topic. Unfortunately the book never gets around to doing much of anything.
The book is divided into three sections. In the first section we have Cudjo who is returning to his native Philadelphia after living abroad with hopes of writing about the incident. Although a bit drawn out this could have formed a suitable foundation. The second section of the book is a bunch of worthless MFA type masturbatory garbage where Wideman dances around the topic of being a writer and approaching the subject. The third section diverges completely and is the perspective of a homeless man from the neighborhood talking about the incident. Wideman is capable of far better. It's a shame to see his time in academia ruining the authenticity of his work.
The book is divided into three sections. In the first section we have Cudjo who is returning to his native Philadelphia after living abroad with hopes of writing about the incident. Although a bit drawn out this could have formed a suitable foundation. The second section of the book is a bunch of worthless MFA type masturbatory garbage where Wideman dances around the topic of being a writer and approaching the subject. The third section diverges completely and is the perspective of a homeless man from the neighborhood talking about the incident. Wideman is capable of far better. It's a shame to see his time in academia ruining the authenticity of his work.
November 21, 2008
So it is with a heavy heart that I appoint but two stars to this book. It has rhapsodic prose, a few characters I could really see, believe. It is about Philadelphia, and it's children, and it's race issues. It sounds like a book that I would love.
Unfortunately, it has no plot. None whatsoever. You might compare it to Ulysses or a Woolf. However, this particular book starts with a tight one hundred pages of plot. Then the perspective shifts, I believe the voice is actually the author? and then in the third part we follow around an interesting homeless guy. We never get the end of the first part, the effort of Cudjoe, an escapee from Philly comes back to find a kid who escaped the move fire.
So this was a disappointment. I'm going to read reviews of anything else by him and see if he can do a plot. That's what this book felt like, he didn't have an ending, so we went off on these tangents, that were thematically relevant, but a complete renig of the writer-reader contract. I barely got through it, the fact that Philadelphia was in the title, forced me to get through.
Unfortunately, it has no plot. None whatsoever. You might compare it to Ulysses or a Woolf. However, this particular book starts with a tight one hundred pages of plot. Then the perspective shifts, I believe the voice is actually the author? and then in the third part we follow around an interesting homeless guy. We never get the end of the first part, the effort of Cudjoe, an escapee from Philly comes back to find a kid who escaped the move fire.
So this was a disappointment. I'm going to read reviews of anything else by him and see if he can do a plot. That's what this book felt like, he didn't have an ending, so we went off on these tangents, that were thematically relevant, but a complete renig of the writer-reader contract. I barely got through it, the fact that Philadelphia was in the title, forced me to get through.
February 15, 2021
This was Pennsylvania. And this is really a 4.5. I don’t know what I expected - I suppose I was thinking this would be a non-fiction account of the bombing in Philadelphia in 1985. This was so much more than that. I need to re-read after some time has passed and let it all sink in.
November 6, 2025
I don't rate books, but this is an exception.
This was a headache. Unfocused and sloppy. Disturbing. Uncomfortable. Predatory. 200 pages, seemingly without purpose. I'm for the Avant-garde when it really tries to create something meaningful. This, however, feels like a book that wants to say something, but has as much nuance in it as a perverted frat boy reading Kierkegaard.
To be completely frank, I think it is an offensively disrespectful and childish account of a horrible crime against humanity and done in poor taste. If this is genius writing, then I must have the aesthetic palate of a blind raccoon foraging in a dumpster - which, of course, is the metaphorically accurate experience of reading this book.
1/5.
This was a headache. Unfocused and sloppy. Disturbing. Uncomfortable. Predatory. 200 pages, seemingly without purpose. I'm for the Avant-garde when it really tries to create something meaningful. This, however, feels like a book that wants to say something, but has as much nuance in it as a perverted frat boy reading Kierkegaard.
To be completely frank, I think it is an offensively disrespectful and childish account of a horrible crime against humanity and done in poor taste. If this is genius writing, then I must have the aesthetic palate of a blind raccoon foraging in a dumpster - which, of course, is the metaphorically accurate experience of reading this book.
1/5.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
October 17, 2024LOVED sections 1 and 2 but the 3rd and final really threw me?????????
November 10, 2015
This started out promisingly; I was moved by Wideman's lyricism. However, by Part 2, I realized I didn't truly know or give a crap about any of the characters in this book. If a book is light on plot, there had better be interesting, engaging characters. With the book lacking on the plot and character front, I at least hoped that Wideman would provide me with unique observations or a fresh perspective. Again, I was disappointed. If not for the occasionally beautiful language, this would be a 1 star book for sure. I finish just about everything I start, even if I don't like it, but if this wasn't assigned for a seminar, I don't think I would have made it past Part 2 of this novel. Proof that voice alone cannot save this novel.
February 7, 2023
I struggled with this. It has a lot of what I usually love, a strong narrative voice, an ambitious style, an intermingling of the personal, political and philosophical. However, it just didn't fully click, even when I found myself loving a lot of individual sentences and passages. I think the issue is that it's so fragmented that I couldn't really latch onto anything, even as someone who usually enjoys fragmented narratives.
April 3, 2023
Five stars is not enough.
October 11, 2020
Philadelphia Fire is about the police bombing of residence of the afro-centric cult known as Move. The group has been a fixture in the city for many years, and this was not the first time that the city attempted to remove the group from West Philadelphia. Philadelphia Fire is the story of Cudjoe, who returns to Philadelphia to search for one of the survivors of the police bombing of the MOVE compound.
I have to admit I came to Philadelphia Fire from a unique perspective. I had lived at 32nd and Powelton when I was in college and the MOVE compound was around the corner at 311 N 33rd. They didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them until one summer morning I left my apartment for work and happened to look down the street towards 33rd. What I saw that summer morning was lines of police vehicles, backhoes and bulldozers ready to have the MOVE members vacate their residence under court order.
By the time I got home, the shoot-out was over and the residence was gone. There were rats as big as cats running all over the block and the rooftops of the apartments on the block. And yet, this is only one side of the story with one small glimpse into the conflict that MOVE members had with the city of Philadelphia and it’s leaders.
As for the 1985 bombing, I watched it on TV like everyone else.I was very far removed from the events and the struggle of the MOVE members.
Wideman gives us an important, and different perspective on MOVE and the events of the 1985 bombing of their compound. His story is that of a writer Cudjoe who returns to Philadelphia after ten years to look for a child who was a survivor of the fire. His story is one of pain, sadness and anxiety over the events of the bombing and how residents of the Cobbs Creek area of Philadelphia dealt with the bombing and fire that consumed 65 houses in the area. Philadelphia Fire tells the story of Cudjoe’s search, but I wonder if it is the search for Cudjoe’s childhood, his past or his identity.
Philadelphia Fire is not a book that is read, it is a book that is experienced. MOVE was not a militant group, but they were unique in cultural movements in that they believed in animal rights, environmentalism and obviously, communal living. Even if you aren’t familiar with MOVE or the 1985 bombing, His alter ego Cudjoe is searching for a young boy who cannot be found, as many young African-American boys. Wideman depicts the pain and loss of his generation and shows us how those touched by the bombing, cultural conflicts and racism managed at the time. I wonder what would happen today in the era of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd. Perhaps MOVE, whose priorities were non-violent for the most part would still be with us. Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman is a tremendous gift to make us think about how we want to approach race relations.
Philadelphia Fire is simply an excellent experience. I would like to thank the author, Scribner, and Edelweiss+ for the advance reader copy. I have voluntarily left this review.
I have to admit I came to Philadelphia Fire from a unique perspective. I had lived at 32nd and Powelton when I was in college and the MOVE compound was around the corner at 311 N 33rd. They didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them until one summer morning I left my apartment for work and happened to look down the street towards 33rd. What I saw that summer morning was lines of police vehicles, backhoes and bulldozers ready to have the MOVE members vacate their residence under court order.
By the time I got home, the shoot-out was over and the residence was gone. There were rats as big as cats running all over the block and the rooftops of the apartments on the block. And yet, this is only one side of the story with one small glimpse into the conflict that MOVE members had with the city of Philadelphia and it’s leaders.
As for the 1985 bombing, I watched it on TV like everyone else.I was very far removed from the events and the struggle of the MOVE members.
Wideman gives us an important, and different perspective on MOVE and the events of the 1985 bombing of their compound. His story is that of a writer Cudjoe who returns to Philadelphia after ten years to look for a child who was a survivor of the fire. His story is one of pain, sadness and anxiety over the events of the bombing and how residents of the Cobbs Creek area of Philadelphia dealt with the bombing and fire that consumed 65 houses in the area. Philadelphia Fire tells the story of Cudjoe’s search, but I wonder if it is the search for Cudjoe’s childhood, his past or his identity.
Philadelphia Fire is not a book that is read, it is a book that is experienced. MOVE was not a militant group, but they were unique in cultural movements in that they believed in animal rights, environmentalism and obviously, communal living. Even if you aren’t familiar with MOVE or the 1985 bombing, His alter ego Cudjoe is searching for a young boy who cannot be found, as many young African-American boys. Wideman depicts the pain and loss of his generation and shows us how those touched by the bombing, cultural conflicts and racism managed at the time. I wonder what would happen today in the era of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd. Perhaps MOVE, whose priorities were non-violent for the most part would still be with us. Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman is a tremendous gift to make us think about how we want to approach race relations.
Philadelphia Fire is simply an excellent experience. I would like to thank the author, Scribner, and Edelweiss+ for the advance reader copy. I have voluntarily left this review.
Read
March 2, 2023Difficult. I went into this expecting it to be mainly about the MOVE bombing, and it is, in pockets. Once I realized the main project was an exploration of the protagonist's consciousness, I was able to appreciate it.
Contains the most beautiful description of dumpster diving behind a McDonald's. Fantastic passage of free association wherein Cudjoe smells a dirty bathroom and it reminds him of a barn, which brings up a memory of spying a mentor's daughter taking a shower in the moonlight, which stirs up thoughts of his own desire and mortality. Sections of brilliance that I thought about afterward: Yes, this is what it's like to think and be alive. There were also sections where I really didn't know what was going on. Fwiw, I'm a sleep-deprived reader.
I was most engaged in a more traditional scene wherein the protagonist, a "middling" writer has lunch with an old friend who works for the evil mayor and enjoys the spoils of political power. The two were on the same side politically in their university days, and the fancy-suited bureaucrat makes a cold but rather convincing case for accepting the realpolitik and grabbing the best life one can. I could have read a whole novel about this relationship.
Contains the most beautiful description of dumpster diving behind a McDonald's. Fantastic passage of free association wherein Cudjoe smells a dirty bathroom and it reminds him of a barn, which brings up a memory of spying a mentor's daughter taking a shower in the moonlight, which stirs up thoughts of his own desire and mortality. Sections of brilliance that I thought about afterward: Yes, this is what it's like to think and be alive. There were also sections where I really didn't know what was going on. Fwiw, I'm a sleep-deprived reader.
I was most engaged in a more traditional scene wherein the protagonist, a "middling" writer has lunch with an old friend who works for the evil mayor and enjoys the spoils of political power. The two were on the same side politically in their university days, and the fancy-suited bureaucrat makes a cold but rather convincing case for accepting the realpolitik and grabbing the best life one can. I could have read a whole novel about this relationship.
January 31, 2022
This novel goes places that the back cover doesn’t cover. Wideman’s plot is thin, but filled to the brim with quotable passages and contrasting language. Uncouth, unbridled, and spastic, maybe the fire was just the beginning. Maybe we’re meant to carve ourselves out from inside the ruble and ash. And the sad part is, many of us don’t.
July 21, 2023
man, what a weird book. straddles autofiction, reportage, essay, novel, all simultaneously. I think that sometimes it gets a little caught in its own wake, but that's only because it's trying to do about thirty different things in two hundred pages. happy I read it. wideman's got this spreading yet incisive prose style that I haven't seen before.
October 28, 2024
Really wanted to like this novel, especially after picking it up on recommendation but after 140 pages, I’m cutting my losses.
There was potential for something great here, but that was quickly lost in the murky, stream of consciousness prose and Wideman’s cursory exploration of the thing that made me want to pick up the book — the MOVE cult and its bombing.
There was potential for something great here, but that was quickly lost in the murky, stream of consciousness prose and Wideman’s cursory exploration of the thing that made me want to pick up the book — the MOVE cult and its bombing.
May 28, 2018
Clearly Wideman can write, and the good parts of this book are very good. I enjoyed the first 40 pages and the final part narrated by JB and Cujoe. But there are a middle 100 pages that have no forward momentum and are incomprehensible. These ultimately ruined the book for me.
June 26, 2020
Contained moments of real beauty, but the meandering plot lines and jumps in narrator left me a bit unsatisfied. My favorite moments were those that addressed MOVE as a group and the MOVE bombing directly, but unfortunately those were few and far between.
May 28, 2021
About 1/3rd through I thought this book was a going to be a "near miss". Then 2/3rds through I realized it was more of a BIG swing and miss. Too bad. There's a good book in there somewhere. Or, rather, at only 200 pages it would be more like a good short story in there somewhere.
May 30, 2022
This book is basically a poem. Textures, feelings, stream of consciousness but it totally, completely 1000% works. I was born on May 13, 1985 and have been obsessed with the MOVE numbing for years, yet somehow I only found this book recently, and by accident.
How is it not more popular?
How is it not more popular?
May 1, 2024
1.5 ⭐️ I had such a hard time following the plot, and the story went off on so many tangents. Most of the time, I had no idea what the author was saying. 0.5 ⭐️ added because there were a couple parts of the story that I enjoyed.
March 2, 2018
Read for my MA module.
I was looking forward to reading this because I wanted to read about the bombing of the MOVE house in Osage Avenue- however I felt the novel said very little about it.
I was looking forward to reading this because I wanted to read about the bombing of the MOVE house in Osage Avenue- however I felt the novel said very little about it.
April 4, 2020
Unreadable
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