Title: New England White
Author: Stephen L. Carter
While I was reading New England White, Maren picked up the book and dropped the corner of it right on my big toe. It bled, and a week later it's still bruised. It's a big, deep, heavy, satisfying book. I guess it would be classified as a mystery, since the mystery of who killed economics professor Kellen Zant runs throughout the novel, but it's also an exploration of upper-middle and upper-class African American culture, the saga of the Carlyle family, and a weather log (the book starts with the first snowfall in November and wraps up with the spring thaw, and it snows more in this book than I ever saw in 18 years of living in New England).
Readers at amazon.com complained that the novel was too long. It is long. But it's more than just a mystery. I expect that if Carter cut 200 pages (what several reviewers felt should be done), we would have lost much of the cultural backdrop. I loved the story, but I really felt like I got an education in how a whole group of people lives and thinks in America, warts and all (the positive and negative aspects of African American social clubs were especially interesting). What I liked best about the novel was the story of Julia and Lemaster and their children, especially as Julia gains a backbone through her investigation of Zant's murder. Definitely worth reading and persisting.
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