The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 20 February 1998
by Chester Himes
"I put a sexually frustrated American woman and a racially-frustrated black American male together for a weekend in a New York apartment, and allowed them to soak in American bourbon. I got the result I was looking for: a nightmare of drunkenness, unbridled sexuality, and in the end, tragedy." So said Chester Himes, the author of this intense book. This is an extremely painful and often uneven account of the interracial affair of an African-American author and a professional woman in New York of the 1950s. Both are pained personalities plagued by alcoholism and obsessions driven into them by society's hypocrisies. The man battles with indifferent publishers and racism, while the woman struggles with her personal demons marinated in alcohol. The prose is often brilliantly evocative of the chaotic minds of these dark protagonists. The reader is drawn, by stumbling confusion, into a destructive weekend in a stylish New York flat.
Also by Himes: [If He Hollers Let Him Go] [The Real Cool Killers]