Just Above My Head

I can't wait to read Just Above My Head by James Baldwin. I'm expecting great clarity and inventiveness and sensitivity. I had overlooked reading Baldwin's novels, only reading his essays and watching YouTube video-interviews of him. I'm just reading his first novel and this seems to be his last. It's lengthy, but it will be great!

It has been years since I read Baldwin and this novel which I believe was his last is pretty fantastic. This should be in every school curriculum.

James Baldwin was a marvelous writer. Like Tennessee Williams in the theatre, as a novelist Baldwin was also a poet. In JUST ABOVE MY HEAD, his prose has a musical cadence that fits particularly well with the main plot line about a Black gay Gospel singer named Arthur Montana and his loving and protective family.Narrated in the first person by Arthur's older brother Hall, this is an epic story of a life fully lived, beginning in the period between World War II and Korea and continuing right through the horrors of the Civil Rights struggle of the Sixties.In addition to the Montana family, Baldwin peoples his novel with a large cast of vivid characters: Red, Crunch, and Peanut, who with Arthur form the first Gospel quartet to appear on the scene while Arthur is just fifteen, and the Miller family, friends of the Montanas whose nine-year-old daughter Julia is a child evangelist at the beginning of the story.Julia is one of the most fascinating female characters in Twentieth Century literature; starting out as a child preacher (and a spoiled brat at home), she endures the premature death of her mother and the horror of incest at the hands of her father, and even spends some time as a prostitute before finally making use of the fact that she grows up beautiful to become a successful model.Yet it is still Arthur who is the center of the story; while he never seems troubled by his sexuality, he does worry about being judged by those he loves; this makes accepting love something of a struggle for him.The miracle of this novel is that every character is fully fleshed out and given a complete back story, a rarity in a novel with such a large cast of characters. And this, coupled with Baldwin's soaring, lyrical narrative, makes JUST ABOVE MY HEAD a unique experience that will stay with you long after you read it.

Die ersten 10 Seiten fehlten, mir unerklärlich, sehr ärgerlich. Werde Erstattung beantragen.

Tops the list of my all time favorite novels. I could read this book cover to cover every year (and I do). I bought this copy as a gift for a friend, who had lost their copy. The only complaint is the print size is kinda small. As senior citizens, this can put a bit of a strain on the eyes, but it is a strain that is worth it.