This is my seventh book read in the Women's Prize for Fiction longlist.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is an emotional and insightful family portrait. Each family member is granted a voice and, through this, the reader is provided a full understanding of what dually unites and divides them all. Past horror, buried secrets, and an abundance of pain keeps each character living almost entirely inside their own heads and the reader is provided with an unfiltered access to the demons that guide them.

The pacing of this novel was as exactly as slow as I expect my character-driven family dramas to be, and allowed the reader to explore the full meaning beneath every lyrical utterance and lap up the evocative landscape depicted in the words. The slow-burning tension was exquisitely done and I felt the emotional charge as an electric current that buzzed inside every page. The beauty and the darkness of this story work in a perfect juxtaposition with one another and made for a lyrical masterpiece that will continue to resonate with me and make me long for my return to these characters.

I read this book courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A profoundly sad and moving novel that broke my heart a little. It endows its characters with humanity even while showing them at their worst and has both tremendous compassion and for their flaws and weaknesses as well as their pettiness and malice, shown without sentimental or cheap solutions. It never flinches from what it shows, and it does so using beautiful language, images with great staying power and thematic resonance.

(But what a terrible world it is that needs stories this sad to tell its truth.)

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to review this book.

Unfortunately, I just didn't get into this book. Found it depressing from the start. Maybe it was the frame of mind i was in but it wasn't for me.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward first caught my interest when I read that Margaret Atwood was a fan. I am a massive fan of Atwood and her praise alone was enough to peak my interest. She said the following in a tweet:

“This wrenching new novel by Jesmyn Ward digs deep into the not-buried heart of the American Nightmare.”

This split narrative tale deals with some complex issues from racial discrimination, neglect and drug use to poverty and cancer. The heart of Sing, Unburied, Sing comes once again from Jesmyn Ward’s ability to write realistic characters that readers can empathise with.

My favourite character was thirteen-year-old Jojo. He was the reason I finished this book in just one day, he and his sister Kayla. I disliked their mother Leonie with an equal intensity, she is an incredibly selfish character and one I couldn’t empathise with in any way. She was also essential to my enjoyment of the book.

Sing, Unburied, Sing opening lines make the reader wonder what is going on and what Jojo is about to do.

“I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that it’s something I could look at straight…I try to look like this is normal and boring so Pop will think I’ve earned my thirteen years.”

It is Jojo’s thirteenth birthday and he is about to kill a goat with his grandfather, a man he greatly admires.

Pop and Mam, Jojo’s grandparents have practically brought him and his three-year old sister Kayla. Their mother Leonie is a habitual drug user and cannot be relied upon in any way and his father Michael is in prison.

When JoJo leaves the house that morning he takes care not to slam the door and wake Mam as Mam is terminally ill with cancer.

“Better for Grandma Mam to sleep because the chemo done dried her up and hollowed her out the way the sun and air do water oats.”

We learn that for JoJo Pop is his one constant in life, his Black grandpa. Big Joseph, his White grandpa has only spoken to him twice because he doesn’t like the fact that his son has had kids with a Black girl.

Jojo hasn’t called Leonie since he was young, and Leonie had more good days than bad. Before Michael went to jail.

“Before she started snorting crushed pills. Before all the little mean things she told me gathered and gathered and lodged like grit in a skinned knee.”

Michael has been in prison for three years, since before Kayla was born and Leonie’s drug use has spiralled out of control since until she cares about her next fix more than her own children. Her daughter seeks comfort from Jojo before she would ever turn to Leonie. As a reader I had a sinking feeling when Leonie receives a phone call from Michael to say he is getting out of jail and she decides to take the children with her.

During the journey Jojo encounters a ghost from Pop’s past and learns more about his Pop’s time in Parchman when he just a boy. Parchman was a working farm style prison which the author uses to highlight the discrimination faced by Black people in the Southern states at that time. This is primarily illustrated via the young ghost boy named Richie and makes for a sobering read.

Richie was just twelve when he came to Parchman and Pop took him under his wing. He had been sent there for stealing food, food for his brothers and sisters.

“Lots of folk was in there for stealing food because everybody was poor and starving, and even though White People couldn’t get your work for free, they did everything they could to avoid hiring you and paying you for it.”

Via Richie we find out the dark secrets hidden in Pop’s past and better understand the discrimination faced by him and others over the years, discrimination which continues into the present in the book in a variety of ways and makes for uncomfortable reading.

At times I found Sing, Unburied, Sing more difficult to focus on than Salvage The Bones but I persisted and it turned out to be a gratifying read.

The child of a black, addict mother and a white,convict father, Jojo is trying to find his place in the world. When his father is released from prison his mother packs up all the children and they head off on a road rrip to collect him.
A very enjoyable read

Sing, Unburied, Sing is a really well written book, but it's not enjoyable. I found it hard going and it was Jojo's story that kept me reading. I felt sorry for him and wanted to see he was ok. I wouldn't recommend this book to every one.

Sing Unburied Sing is an exposure of aspects in American society that are uncomfortable to acknowledge but are told with a pointed, honest and heartfelt sense of purpose. Jesmyn Ward airs these issues in an unabbreviated depiction of poverty, drug abuse, and racial discrimination in the USA’s Southern States.

The narration is told alternately through the eyes of 13-year-old JoJo and his 31-year-old mother Leonie in vivid detail and sense of surroundings. JoJo is the son of a black mother and white father, Michael, and they have very much experienced racial abuse and discrimination. Leonie, JoJo and her daughter Kayla, live with her mother (Mam) and father (Pop) while Michael is in prison. Pop has really been JoJo’s father figure but is haunted by past events and is currently nursing his dying wife with cancer.

The first two-thirds of the story are quite gloomy and depressing, while Leonie, JoJo, Kayla, and friend Misty take a road trip to collect Michael as he gets released from Parchman Prison, Mississippi. A very strange character, Richie, joins Michael and the family on the way home. Part of the narration is then taken up by Richie and his probing dialogue with JoJo indicates he has unfinished business.

JoJo is a very unique, sensitive and empathetic young man who deals with his sick sister with such care and attention it incites jealousy with Leonie. The delirious Kayla only wants to be comforted by JoJo.

What becomes apparent in this poetic incision into the history of racial crimes, is that there are unfinished or untold stories that need closure. The horrors of these crimes are unfathomable and the lives they touched need closure. The song needs to be sung! Sing Unburied Sing!

I felt the book lacked pace and was quite depressing for the first half. In complete contrast, the final half of the book was ramped up again and again until we have an extremely powerful and captivating end to the story. The pressure to narrate a story with a history of such horrors and an obligation to maintain dignity for those that suffered is superbly managed by Jesmyn Ward in this book.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing UK and NetGalley, for an ARC version of the book in return for an honest review.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is becoming a well-known novel for a very good reason. It hurts to read, and I think there’s something magical about that. I won’t be able to write a review that provides more insight or detail than those already on here. All I have to say is that it’s a very good book, but be careful to be in the right mind when you read it, as it won’t necessarily leave you feeling happy.