The Turner House

The Turner House is a 2015 debut novel by Angela Flournoy.^[1] The novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction and later won the VCU First Novelist Award. The novel tells the story of a Detroit family with 13 children as it responds to the economic woes of the city, in both the 1920s, and during the 1980s. The house that sees the changes in the family, also becomes a character in the family's saga.^[2]

Flournoy both gives considerable tribute to Zora Neale Hurston as an insipiration for her work, and reviewers made comparison of the novel to works like Hurston's Mules and Men.^[3][4]

Though Flournoy's father's family is originally from Detroit, she had not lived in the city, so did considerable research to be able to depict the different 20th century periods depicted in the novel.^[5]

Reception

Reception of the novel was very positive. Publisher's Weekly wrote that "Flournoy’s writing is precise and sharp, and despite several loose ends [...] the novel draws readers to the Turner family almost magnetically."^[1] The Nation reviewer Hannah K. Gold focuses on how the novel successfully explores the dispossessed African American family, and praises the novel writing that it is "a story transformed by intragenerational retelling rather than passed down. It’s quick and dirty mythmaking."^[6]

References