Second fiddle family

From the acknowledgements page, I felt confident I was in the hands of an original and capable writer: here is what Jones wrote:

For my parents Barbara and Mack Jones, who, to the best of my knowledge, are married only to each other.

This is significant and amusing of course because this novel begins with the protagonist, Dana Lynn (a play on her mother’s name, Gwendolyn), informing us her father, James, is a bigamist. Dana’s whole childhood is foreshadowed by being a second family, “an unknown” (p15) to Chaurisse, her half-sister, and Laverne, James’ first wife. In many ways, Dana exempts her mother from blame, although her mother took on James knowing he was married and would stay married,

This love just rolled towards my mother as though she were standing at the bottom of a steep hill. Mother had no hand in this, only heart.

p27

The result though is that Dana

lived in a world where you could never want what you wanted out in the open

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The first half of the book is from Dana’s childhood perspective, where she and her mother are both consumed by being the second family, the unacknowledged secret family, of having to share her father with his ‘real’ wife and daughter. The only thing they feel they have over Laverne and Chaurisse, is their knowledge of them, unreciprocated. So obsessed are they with the first wife and daughter that they spy on them regularly, ‘surveilling’, they call it, but basically, driving over to watch them in secret, and constantly comparing to see if they themselves have been shortchanged. Gwen and Dana take pride in being ‘better’ – in being more attractive, brighter, higher achieving – but always feeling they are not good enough because they are always second fiddle to his ‘real’ wife and daughter, even if the said wife and daughter are not aware of them. 

It would be too easy to say James is a man who wants to have his cake and eat it too, even if this is the case. This, however, is not a book which casts black men as villains: James tries to do his best by both women, to be a good husband and father twice over. Raleigh, his comrade-in-arms, boyhood friend, work partner, aids and abets him at every turn. Raleigh is a simply sweet man, impossible not to love, and who is beloved by all the 4 women in James’ life – 5 if you include Miss Bunny, James’ wonderful mother. Raleigh seems to be a shadow self of James’ – he shares James’ mother, James’ house in childhood, James’ business in adulthood, and James’ 2 families, with no apparent family or life of his own. This is not just a book about 2 families, this is also a book about the strength of friendships, James and Raleigh, Gwendolyn and Willa Mae, the friendships between the mothers and daughters, and the almost illicit, almost incestuous friendship between Dana and Chaurisse.  

The second part of the book is from Chaurisse’s teenaged, pre-university perspective. Marvellously, Jones reveals the other perspective, stripping back Dana’s assumption that Chaurisse has it all, because she is the acknowledged and preferred daughter. Chaurisse is a very nice girl, but plain, simple, not particularly clever though steady and practical, and lonely, longing for a best friend, longing to be special to someone outside her family. Dana inveigles her way into Chaurisse’s life, under false pretences of course, and the innocence of Chaurisse juxtaposes beautifully with Dana’s pre-knowledge of their relationship.  

All the characters in this book are immensely relatable and sympathetic. There are no clichés here, no easy stereotypes. It is a book where the blackness of the characters is front stage, but still secondary to their humanness, a rare and refreshing read as such. Jones, in interview, says she took inspiration from her own life, where she also has 2 other ‘unknown’ or secret sisters, each with different mothers, and who share a father with her and her two brothers. The story illustrates what Jones thinks may be more commonplace a situation than is widely supposed, that a man may have more than one family, and ‘get away with it’, so to speak. Pleasant, hardworking, a good friend and a devoted family man as James is, he is nevertheless selfish in not caring that others are betrayed, sacrificed and hurt for his gratification and because he wants what is beyond legality and social norms. He seem not to take on board the compromising situation he puts his 2nd family in, who cannot claim normal legal social status/standing. Strangely, Jones does not indict James for his behaviour, and at no point does he show remorse or regret, nor do the consequences of his actions damage him particularly. In fact, in this narrative, there seem no consequences for the man who causes this situation; that one or more families have to be ‘hidden’, with all the psychological and emotional pain and suffering, as well as material deprivation that costs the ‘other’ family.  

In interview, Jones also said she grew up in a family where boys were favoured and as a girl, she was loved but not celebrated the same way. However, neither Dana nor Chaurisse have any brothers, so the issue of gender in sibling competition is not a theme in this novel. However, Jones also flags up in interview how social class matters, but is not just economics but performance, an angle which her novel illustrates beautifully. 

The narrative does have a showdown when Gwendolyn and Dana confront Laverne and Chaurisse. After grief and anger, Laverne takes James back, in a public recommitment and expensive party, and Gwen and Dana seem to have lost their husband and father from their lives consequently. None of this is particularly surprising, and quite realistic. However, after all that build up, the novel comes to a rather abrupt and short end.  

Sometimes – often, in fact – Jones’ writing is lyrical:

It’s funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.

p45

The way she describes beautiful girls as ‘silver’, creates amazing new vocabulary, which also is part of how she came to the title, Silver Sparrow – the sparrow part taken from the gospel that “His Eye is on the Sparrow”, i.e. God cares for the littlest and humblest of creatures. Jones’ use of imagery is imaginative and innovative:

Everything was almost the same with her, but she went about her business in the way that put me in the mind of an old matchbook. You can scratch the head against the strip in the same way you always have, but you are not going to get any kind of spark.

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There is the odd occasion however, when her writing hits a discord:

when he first clamped eyes on my mother.

p3

Surely that second sentence in the novel should read as “clapped eyes” rather than “clamped eyes”? But it may be a particular way of clapping eyes that Jones wanted to convey…except that a few pages on, the word clamped is used again, in a different context now, in a child’s hand:

He handed them [three two dollar bills] over to me and I clamped them in my palm.

p9

This reads better, clamping in a palm, than clamping eyes – but it would be nice if the author was more careful or discriminating in the use of the strange word, ‘clamped’. But this is a drop in the ocean; for most part, Jones’ writing is beautiful, elegant, original, delightful.  

All in all, a really charming read, and makes me want to read the rest of her oeuvre too.