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Overview
Overview
From the New York Times Bestselling Author of An American Marriage
"A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones's skill for wry understatement never wavers."
--O: The Oprah Magazine
"Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I'll never forget. This is a book I'll read more than once."
--Judy Blume
With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed "one of the most important writers of her generation" (the Atlanta Journal Constitution).
"A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones's skill for wry understatement never wavers."
--O: The Oprah Magazine
"Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I'll never forget. This is a book I'll read more than once."
--Judy Blume
With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed "one of the most important writers of her generation" (the Atlanta Journal Constitution).
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Jones, Tayari
- ISBN: 9781616201425
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.10 x 0.80
- Number Of Pages: 368
- Publication Year: 2012
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Well-written and engrossing novel about family secrets.
Elizabeth S. - 4 years 11 months agoSilver Sparrow is a well-written, captivating novel about deception, identity, and the secrets we keep. James Witherspoon has two families. "With wives, it only matters who gets there first. With daughters, the situation is a bit more complicated." James Witherspoon's firstborn daughter, Dana Lynn Yarboro was born four months before her half-sister, Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon. But Chaurisse was born into a family that is legitimate, while Dana was born into a "second family," which is illegitimate, secret and insecure. Because Dana is aware of her father's other family, she seeks an understanding of her role in her father's life. To accomplish this, Dana attempts to learn everything she can about Chaurisse by becoming her friend. In asserting her independence, Dana ultimately threatens to destroy the careful balance that James works so hard to maintain. While James would have made an easy villain in these circumstances, he was a sympathetic character here. In this novel, as in families, everyone has something to lose. Silver Sparrow is a harrowing story that stays with you long after you've finished reading.
HPB Staff Review -
“My father is a bigamist.” #SummerReading
Jennifer N. - 6 years 2 months agoIt all started when I fell in love at first read with Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage. With its themes of racism, incarceration injustice, family, and fidelity, this novel was written for such a time as this! When I discovered she had written an earlier novel, I picked it immediately...but quickly replaced it on the shelf after reading the first sentence, “My father is a bigamist.” Repulsed, that was a reality I wasn’t quite ready to wrestle with...until Silver Sparrow was announced as the Modern Mrs. Darcy November 2020 Main Pick. I decided to give it another go on audio... “And this is how it started. Just with coffee and the exchange of their long stories. Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start a life just as it can start a day. This was a meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born. From before they made choices that would complicate their lives.” “This was what it was to have a friend: someone who knew exactly who you were and didn’t blame you for it...I’m not the one to believe that our shared blood made us sisters, but having shared a father gave us something in common that looped around our ankles and pulled tight around our wrists. This was between all of us. The six of us were hogtied, fastened in place by different knots...Life it seemed was a long con, rotten with dirty tricks.” “You only lie to people you love...You may be white on the outside, but when the music starts, you are one hundred percent American Negro...and I wondered what it felt to live inside such disloyal skin...“What is done in the dark will come to light.” Listening to two sides of the same story narrated by the alternating voices of Rosalyn Coleman Williams and Heather Alicia Simms brought this story to life and helped me to look in the mirror and interrogate my own prejudices against the outward appearances of not only faces but the situations in which they find themselves, whether silver or sparrow. #SummerReading