This book was very confusing in the beginning and I almost walked away, but once I was able to figure out what was going on, I was glad I stayed with it - a story of raw grief and levels we will go to as humans to keep our loved ones near - a read that will stay with me.

When Cee Williams was 12 she carried her 7 year old brother Wayne from the ocean. Cee then lost consciousness and Wayne disappeared. Their mother believes that Wayne is still alive, but his disappearance accentuated rifts in the family. Cee can’t remember what happened to Wayne, and even after many years of therapy she still imagines that she sees Wayne everywhere. Then a man named Wayne Williams enters her life.

I enjoyed “The Old Drift” by this author, but this book felt like the author was trying too hard to create an inventive structure. One of the problems is that it felt like 2 books. Most of the book focuses on Cee and how she copes with grief (and with the suggestion that she had something to do with Wayne’s disappearance). There is an abrupt shift in tone when the second Wayne appears. Part of his storyline appeared in the short story “Will Williams”. I liked that story, which was based on a Poe story, but it doesn’t fit at all with the Cee storyline. The book was already juggling grief, race and family dynamics. It really didn’t need to add Poe’s doppelgänger plot too.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

WOW! I was not expecting this story to take so many unexpected turns. The writing is brilliant and the story will stay with you long after you have read the last word.

Special thanks to Random House Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

This book is surely about grief and loss but the line "I don't want to tell you what happened, I want to tell you how it felt", drew me in because I definitely have had a ton of loss and grief. So I thought this opening was going to be helpful to me because I can't stand self-help books so I was hoping for some comfort here.

This book surely was thought provoking the way we interpret grief when revisiting trauma and how we get confused when trying to remember and sometimes get it wrong and don't remember the way things happened.

I think other readers will feel differently, and in more than just one way based on the amount of trauma and grief in their life. it just felt a little sad and a little cold to me. However, it was okay.

The Furrows is one of the hardest books I've ever read. Not only because it required immense concentration (it did), but also because the subject matter is very very difficult. That being said, this book is so worth the hard things. It is beautiful. It is perfect.

Exploring grief through the eyes of sister Cassandra, the loss of her brother Wayne affects everything throughout her life. Meeting a stranger who is searching for his own place in the world makes Cassandra everything about her loss, including that the stranger's name is Wayne. Excellent writing.

Extraordinarily affecting! A challenging yet moving tale about grief and how loss can cleave families. Serpell's writing is lovely and evocative.

Namwali Serpell’s The Furrows opens with an epigraph taken from Moncrieff and Kilmartin’s translation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: The Fugitive: “. . . people do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relations to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were travelling abroad.”
The story opens with Cassandra (Cee), an adult narrator, stating her intention—to explain not what happened years before when she was twelve, but how it felt. While alone on a Delaware beach with her seven-year-old brother Wayne, the boy drowned, leaving no body. Cee returned without him to the vacation home her college professor father and artist mother had rented for the summer.

Granted, Cee does begin by telling what happened—at least, a version of what happened as she experienced it. She also recounts the various ways her parents, a summer neighbor, a policewoman, and Grandma Lu reacted as well as conversations with Dr. Rothman, a therapist she began seeing two years after Wayne drowned and who would turn out to be the first in a succession of therapists.

Cee’s opening account seems realistic enough until it doesn’t. As Cee views events at different ages, details change, raising questions in the reader’s mind about what really happened. As daughter of a black father and white mother, Cee’s mixed-mixed race identity sometimes comes into play but never takes over the story. As she announces at the outset, this is not the story of what happened, but a dramatization of how it felt, of how people experience and deal with grief. Readers must keep that focus in mind.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth/Random House for an advance reader copy of Namwali Serpell’s creative and engaging new novel.

This is a novel about the different ways that people deal with grief. When Cassandra is twelve and her little brother is only seven, they are alone at the beach when an accident occurs and her little brother is lost forever. Cassandra has nightmarish dreams about him. Since his body was never found, her mother is convinced he is still alive and forms a group Vigil dedicated to finding missing children. Her father throws himself into a new relationship. When Cassandra meets and falls for a man with the same name as her late brother, her family thinks he is just scamming her, but he is dealing with his own haunted past. The book moves along slowly and is at times very confusing. Although it ends in a decent place, it is mostly pretty dark and depressing. If you are looking for something light to read, choose something else.

Title: The Furrows
Author: Namwali Serpell
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:
"The Furrows" by Namwali Serpell

My Assessment:

"The Furrows" was quite a read that explored 'trauma, race, family dynamics, loss, and grief in a mysterious, challenging, fascinating way. The reader will have to keep up because this novel seems to have two storylines with this biracial family William's family [C - Cassandra, Wayne], who were brother and sister, and Wayne, that wasn't the brother, however, was connected to the story. 'The Furrows' story involved death in this family along with loneliness, memory, identity, and dreams. The story's plot will keep you turning the pages while wondering and guessing what is going on in it because it skips quite a bit back and forth, where one may have to re-read several portions for a better understanding. The quote 'l don't want to tell you what happened, l want to tell you how it felt, and it was just that as this author delivers a good story to the reader. It was very well presented to the reader how each of the family members dealt with the death of this lost son. The characters were very intriguing in the parts they delivered to the story.

To get the whole story, the reader must pick it up and see how well this author brings this accomplished story out o the reader because I don't want to tell too much more. But, if you stick with it, the reader will get a perfectly delivered story.


Thanks to NetGallery and Hogarth Press for providing me with an eARC and my giving my honest opinion of the read.

THE FURROWS by Namwali Serpell is gorgeously written, the heartbreak of the family rendered as though through a fog and yet viscerally felt. I ached for the young narrator of the first part. And then I missed her in the second part. I am so grateful I had a chance to read this e-galley. For any of my students who want to read and write about grief, I will recommend this novel.

This is a powerful story. When Cassandra is 12 years old, she is at the beach alone with her brother, 7 year old Wayne. There is an accident, and Wayne is lost though his body is never found. The uncertainty around what happened with Wayne reshapes Cassandra's family. Her father ends up leaving and starts a new family. Her mother, always questioning whether Wayne is really gone, creates a foundation for finding missing children. As Cassandra gets older, she struggles with the degree to which this tragedy shapes her life, including her relationships with her parents and her career. This is complicated by her sense that she sees Wayne everywhere. On one flight, Cassandra meets yet another man who reminds her of Wayne, prompting a new set of interactions that makes Cassandra, and the mysterious stranger, question much about their lives, their beliefs, and their experiences.

This is a thoughtful and often surprising examination of grief, memory, and the stories people tell themselves.

Highly recommended!

Now a Shadow

Twelve year old Cassandra tries in vain to save her seven year old brother Wayne from drowning. She passed out, did not actually see him die, and the body was never recovered. Still– “I felt him die. He was dead.” The irrefutable truth is this young girl’s burden to bear alone. Her mother will not admit to his death and starts a foundation to assist finding missing children, at one point traumatizing her daughter with “If he’s alive, that means you didn’t kill him!” Cassandra’s father distantly accepts that their bonds are lost and her grandmother pointedly asks her what she did with that boy.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.”

What follows are fruitless years of sessions with out-of-touch psychiatrists. There are multiple dreams of her brother dying in different scenarios, each time under Cassandra’s watch. Each elation she feels at seeing him is immediately crushed by realizing his death once more. The intense grief is real and halfway through you wonder if this theme can be sustained much longer, where is the resolution?

Suddenly, midway through the book, the narration flips over from Cassandra to a man she is making love to. This man is convinced her brother is still alive and is shadowing him. He takes Wayne’s name, investigates the family, meets up with Cassandra, and they quickly fall for each other. If it sounds confusing, it is. We are given bits and pieces of this Wayne’s background but things are unclear as to who he really is or represents.

Frankly, Cassandra’s voice is sorely missed when the narrators switch. After sharing so much emotional turmoil I mourned the intimacy that had been nurtured. I wanted to hear Cassandra telling me she was on the way to becoming whole again, but of course the gulf that is Wayne’s absence can never be filled. We do not lose her, we just see her continue the struggle from a different set of eyes.

In "The Furrows" Namwali Serpell has delivered a touching account of a journey into devastating loss, a journey without a comforting resolution. We are not always told what happened, we bear witness to how it felt.

Thank you to Hogarth Books, Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #TheFurrows #NetGalley

I admit that I almost didn’t read this book. The premise of a 12-year-old girl who witnesses the drowning of her younger brother felt like it might be too raw for my new mom heart. I wasn’t wrong about the way this book would wreck me, but I’m so glad I read it anyway. The Furrows is utterly mesmerizing. The story is told from the perspective of Cassandra, who is twelve when her brother Wayne drowns in the ocean, leaving no body for her family to mourn and a mother who insists that Wayne is still alive. Cassandra bristles against her mother’s delusions for years until, as an adult, she meets a man named Wayne and is certain it is her lost brother. I thought I had a handle on where Serpell was taking me with this conceit, but I was wrong. This novel defied my expectations and then continued to do so again, and again, and again. The book opens with Cassandra telling us, “I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.” She certainly succeeds in this, penning a gripping tale and a meditation on grief with sentences as clever as they are poignant. If you can handle this story of devastation and enjoy authors who defy narrative conventions, The Furrows is not to be missed.

Fall reading mood: you want your heart broken and your mind blown

Read this if you like: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, sad and gorgeous stories, luminous writing, metaphors you could have never come up with but that capture a feeling you know too well

Honestly- she lost me. Cassandra's (C) little brother Wayne was pulled away from her in the ocean and, because his body has not been found, he looms large over what becomes a broken family. The first half of this novel is very much about grief, grief which morphs and changes and comes in waves. Then there's the second half about a man named Wayne who has lived a more difficult life than C. Sigh. In some parts the language is gorgeous and in others pretentious. And I got lost. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

"I don't want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt. When I was twelve my little brother drowned."

This is such a strong opening. I was immediately gripped. These three simple sentences hold out the promise of a harrowing, true read to come. Almost at once, though, the story let go of me. It's a story about childhood trauma and family trauma that includes the confusion and guilt and the way we revisit our traumas and try to remember, and sometimes misremember...but instead of leading me to believe in this trauma, this grief, the story added misty layers between the trauma, page by page, where eventually I felt like I was reading through a thick fog. The journey from first to last page was compelling and thought-provoking, but a little cold. This is the kind of book that is going to impress itself on readers in different ways and for some readers the elliptical storytelling and unexpectedness of the way this story travels will be a glorious perfect read--just not for me.

Thank you Hogarth and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this much anticipated novel. The Furrows: An Elegy has been on almost every “most anticipated” list from Lit Hub to Vulture. Namwali Serpell’s debut novel, The Old Drift, was highly lauded and her follow-up has earned its author comparisons to Toni Morrison. In an interview, Serpell explained that the genesis of The Furrows dates back some twenty years to the death of her sister who died of a drug overdose. Serpell said, “what I took from that experience had to do with the grieving process – my refusal to accept her death psychologically and this sense of seeing her everywhere.”

The Furrows opens with 12 year old Cassandra Williams (C or Cee) and her 7 year old brother Wayne enjoying the beach at their family’s vacation rental in Delaware when Wayne was pulled by the waves, “suddenly inside them, the great grooves in the water, the furrows.” When a traumatized Cassandra returns home without Wayne, her paternal grandmother, who doted on Wayne and never took to Cee, confronts her with the accusation, “What you do with that boy, Cassandra?” The Williams family “world was tilted now and Wayne’s absence in our lives had become the drain toward which everything ran.”

With no body to confirm the fact that Wayne had died, Cee’s mother establishes a nonprofit, Vigil, to support mothers of missing children and “to be ready for her dead boy’s return” and her father addresses his grief by leaving the family and restarting his life in a different state with a new wife. Cee’s grief bubbles in waves – she sees Wayne get hit by a car as the two are crossing a road together, she spies him in a convenience store in Brooklyn, and on a tour of a studio lot, and is by his side when he is crushed under a carousel. Despite a litany of therapists, Cee is plagued with bouts of eczema, allergic reactions to wool and to metal which caused her to stop cutting and with dreams of Wayne that “savaged” her nights.

Although the first half of the novel draws readers into the roiling nature of grief, particularly a loss that occurs without emotional closure, the unreliability of memory and familial fracture, the second half changes tempo, tone and even plot. The perspective shifts to a character named Wayne, who may be the missing Wayne Williams (he claims to have been found on the street when he was five or six years old) or simply a con man, and another man who calls himself Will who is Wayne’s doppleganger and sometime tormenter. This Wayne and an adult Cee flirt and spend the night together after suffering some minor injuries in an earthquake (or a terrorist attack?) in the Bay Area. It is this part of the novel that is challenging and would be a great selection for a book club to discuss whether Wayne survived and how the reader revisits with Cee the wounds of a tragedy. This is a compelling and finely wrought novel.

The was a powerful and very well written story. The writing was inventive and powerful. I really enjoyed that. The first half of the book was very interesting and I couldn't stop reading, even though I didn't fully understand what was going on. But the second half of the book lost me a bit. I didn't care for the change of narrator and I found the ending less than stratifying. It is a powerful story of grief and that is part that will stick with me.

Highly literary exploration of grief and guilt that somehow goes astray. While I loved the writing and atmosphere, I began to drift when alternate realities were introduced and found it hard to track. The loss of a vibrant younger brother is trauma enough without the repetitive forays.

I don't know how to desribe this novel. Part 1 is definitely a meditation on grief - "I don't want to tell you what happened, I want to tell you how it felt." Part 1 really captured the feelings of loss and grief. But then Part 2 happened, and while interesting, like many others, I'm not totally sure I get it. Part 2 is mistaken identity, a new point of view. Then the last chapter is definitely back to feeling more than what happened (assuming the ending is, in fact, an allegory).

What I DO know is that the prose is GORGEOUS. Namwali Serpell is an excellent writer - I may not totally understand, but I definitely FELT the novel.

"I don't want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.

Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they're alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can't give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children.

As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars. Here is her brother's face, the light in his eyes, the way he seems to recognize her, too. But it can't be, of course. Or can it? Then one day, in another accident, C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who is also searching for someone and for his own place in the world. His name is Wayne."

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.