Queen Solomon
by Tamara Faith Berger
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Pub Date Oct 30 2018 | Archive Date Nov 14 2018
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Description
Queen Solomon is another masterful take on the politics of sex, race, and power from the author of the Believer Book Award–winning Maidenhead.
Advance Praise
“There are no easy moments, no comfort to be found in the searing prose…When writers get young female sexuality right, stories become a revelation and such is the case with Maidenhead. The writing pulls the reader desperately close.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist, writing in The Rumpus
“Maidenhead is a mesmerizing and important novel, lying somewhere between the wilds of Judy Blume, ‘Girls Gone Wild’ and Michel Foucault. It’s a thrilling, enlightening and really hot place to be.” —Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail
“Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger: Now there’s a novel that terrified me to the end.”—Miranda July, in “By The Book,” The New York Times
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781552453728 |
| PRICE | $17.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 160 |
Featured Reviews
Aaron M, Reviewer
This is the third book I have read by Tamara Faith Berger, and the theme that really runs through her work is that sex is a form of power, a power to strengthen yourself, even if it means that it is also destroying you at the same time. This is the case of the narrator in her new novel, "Queen Solomon". His life changes when his family hosts a woman, Barbra, an Ethiopian Jew, whom he sees as a giant and the object of every desire that he's ever had. She quickly pulls him into an abusive relationship that does not end well. Seven years later he has a girlfriend and is a university student but everything that he does is shaped by this relationship that he had with Barbra. So when she shows up, with a man he does not approve of in the least, it turns his life back into chaos. Even though this novel have scenes of graphic sexual encounters, it seems tame compared to some of her other works. Berger seems to spend more of her time with philosophy, with Jewish history, culture, and the tangled webs from years of war, racism, and destruction. It is almost like the family around him, besides his father, might not know exactly what is going on between him and Barbra, but knows that it is not something that is healthy. His girlfriend spends a great deal of time questioning him about his motives in regards to the reasons why he only sleeps with black women and cannot be faithful, and if this is the way that he deals with the trauma of the things Barbra, his "abuser", put his through. As the story unfolds, the questions are answered not by the text but by the actions of the narrator and the pull that Barbra always will have on him. "Queen Solomon" is not going to be appreciated by everyone. Some will see it as too crass. Some will see it as too chaotic, but I see it as another solid work by Tamara Faith Berger. This actually fits well into the themes she explores often, and I feel like it's another piece to her very interesting, solid canon.
I received this as an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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