You Know Better: A Novel - Hardcover By Ansa, Tina McElroy

Description: asin 006019779Xupc 9780060197797It is the spring weekend of the Peach Blossom Festival in the tiny middle Georgia town of Mulberry, but things are far from sweet for the Pines women. LaShawndra, an eighteen-year-old hoochie-mama who wants nothing more out of life than to dance in a music video, has messed up...again. But this time she isn't sticking around to hear about it.Not that her mother seems to care; after all, Sandra is busy working on her real estate career and on the local minister. It's LaShawndra's grandmother, Lily, a former schoolteacher, principal, school board administrator, and highly respected cornerstone of the Mulberry community, who is scouring the streets at midnight looking for her granddaughter.Over the course of one weekend these three disparate women, guided by a trio of unexpected spirits, will learn to face the pain in their lives and discover that with reconciliation comes the healing they all desperately seek. In this magical, deeply resonant novel, Tina McElroy Ansa goes straight to the heart of women's relationships to reveal the soul that bonds us all. Editorial ReviewsAmazon.com ReviewThe pleasures of Tina McElroy Ansa's sharp-witted fourth novel, You Know Better, are obvious from the first pages, in which we are introduced to the author's lovable, imperfect characters, her gift for capturing the rhythms of speech, and her dead-on observations of African American family life at the turn of the 21st century. In her hands, what could've read like Touched by an Angel instead is a tender and rueful study of the forces that shape three generations of women. Lily, a successful former school teacher and administrator, is out at midnight, combing the streets of her small Georgia town for her teenage granddaughter, LaShawndra, who's in trouble again. Lily's daughter, Sandra, is too busy making money and trying to attract the new pastor to pay attention to the chaos of LaShawndra's life, let alone to take responsibility for the girl's misbehavior or her low self-esteem. But before the next day is over, each of the women will be visited by a guiding spirit and forced to face what they have been running from. A spiritual novel free of sentimentality or preaching, You Know Better suggests that most people already know what's wrong with their lives, but it may take divine intervention to motivate them to fix their problems. --Regina MarlerFrom Publishers WeeklyAfrican-American favorite Ansa (The Hand I Fan With) focuses in her fourth novel on three generations of troubled women in a small Georgia town, employing the Dickensian device of ghostly guides to lead them to enlightenment. The Peach Blossom Festival is upon tiny Mulberry, but the Pines women have little reason for rejoicing. LaShawndra, an 18-year-old "coochie" who engages in indiscriminate sex and whose greatest aspiration is to dance in a music video, has disappeared. Her mother, Sandra, is too busy with her real estate career, her new romance with a pastor and youth-enhancing beauty treatments to look for LaShawndra. So it falls to the girl's grandmother, Lily, a respected pillar of the community, to perform the search. The book is a first-person triptych, the three Pines women taking turns from oldest to youngest in detailing how they arrived at this latest crisis point and each has a different spirit guide to help her out. Ansa has a clear prose style, and she does a fine job of getting inside the women's heads; the chief problem is that, with the exception of Lily, her protagonists are unsympathetic. Lily herself overplays the religion card, while Sandra and LaShawndra are too selfish to rouse much sympathy. One thing they have in common: all three take the scenic route in their extended confessions, resulting in a book that is almost all past history with very little plot.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.Read moreProduct detailsPublisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; 1st edition (April 1, 2002)Language ‏ : ‎ EnglishHardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pagesISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 006019779XISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060197797Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 poundsDimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 1.09 x 9.25 inchesBest Sellers Rank: #707,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)#36,480 in American Literature (Books)#37,215 in Literary Fiction (Books)Customer Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 stars 53 ratings

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