A House Made of Stars
"Grandma" is the hero of A House Made of Stars, a stunning debut novel by Tawnysha Greene. Grandma is also my new hero. A truly wonderful character, well beyond, I am sure, her depiction through the sensibility of a desperate, intelligent child. She's a literary marvel.
And the child! Her voice is perfect as we watch her reluctantly catching on to the horror around her—the cruel insanity of her father, the Old Testament submissiveness of an otherwise loving mother--hungrily embracing the hopeful glimpses she sees in others of a better life. The strength and savvy of her sister, another, subtly surprising grace that keeps us hopeful along with the narrator through their nearly unbearable awakening.
Now we come to the narration itself, which is ingeniously artful in its apparent simplicity. The limitations of the children's view augmented by their aural disability gives us a gentle vantage of irony that obviates the precociousness too often appearing in such voices, when the clever adult can be seen behind the narrative curtain. The author's hand is occasionally glimpsed in House, but not awkwardly, and only near the end, quite in step with the girl's awakened consciousness.
This story feels so real I cannot but wonder at its source. Greene mentions “journals” in her acknowledgments, and so, along with the especially heart-wrenching authenticity of a scene in which the children are beaten, I am fairly confident this is based on true events, and this saddens me to the core. But if it is purely fictitious, Greene's imagination is unquestioningly a celestial gift.
Either way, if the fifty shades of fickle in the contemporary world of publishing allows room for justice, A House Made of Stars will become the standout success it fully deserves to be.
The story becomes something of a chase toward the end, with the narrator leaving clues as to where she can be found, and I found myself growing more and more arrested and wanting to read on.
The characters in Tawnysha Greene’s gorgeous debut are children who can show us the world with startling and heartbreaking clarity. They see the beauty in scraps of ugliness and sense the danger in every tranquil domestic scene. In a novel that belies the familiar tropes of coming-of-age, child narrator, and survival narrative, Greene offers us something that transcends all three.
Tawnysha Greene's been publishing little pieces of this novel in various journals for the last few years; amazingly, most seemed self-contained, enough that I hadn't realized they were part of a larger work. Now, they're all gathered in this, her debut novel--and what a novel it is.
I'm reminded a bit of Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina. This book covers some of the same ground in terms of presenting a poor "white trash" girlhood, but I liked this book a whole lot more than I remember liking that one. I think there's a certain innocence that Greene captures that Allison, for me, did not and perhaps wasn't trying to.
This novel is haunting. As the narrator loses her innocence and begins to understand the world around her, I was rooting for her to find her way. Grandma and the stars are the ones who help preserve her childhood and give her some happiness and hope in a dysfunctional family. I hope this is only the first of many beautiful novels to come from Tawnysha Greene.
Tawnysha Greene’s novel is moving and blew me away. Her narrator is articulate, yet feels true to the mind of a 10 year old. The book is full of emotion, and the way she writes, the reader is in the middle of everything. The descriptions of the abuse, the emotional turmoil, the religious fundamentalism feeding into the mother’s psyche . . . everything left me wanting more—in a good way. I felt like these were people I knew, and I cheered and cried along with them. I cannot wait to read more of Greene’s work. She’s definitely one to watch.
This is a well-written and stunning debut novel. The characters are complex and will stay with a reader long after the final page. The ten-year-old protagonist's voice draws the reader in and never lets go. The tension between the mother and grandmother is second only to the suspense and terror induced by the father who is trying (and failing) not to be like his own troubled, abusive mother. This depiction of abuse and its cycles, mental illness, poverty, enablers, deafness, and the supportive love of a grandmother and sibling is not to be missed. I look forward to Tawnysha Greene's next novel!
