White Tears

Haunted by a tune
with his cash cow running low
white boy gets the blues.

This book, ostensibly about two white college friends who are obsessed with black music, and who make a recording that takes on a life of its own, deceived me in a dark and beautiful way. I was drawn into the story about the two white guys, and felt a lot of sympathy for Seth, who was from a working class background and didn't have the glamour and privilege that his friend Carter had. The book seemed to be about their friendship, and I settled in for a novel about this rich boy-poor boy friendship over a background of obsessive record collecting and pre-WWII black music. Then the book took a turn and I began to realize that it was not a story particularly about Seth and Carter at all, and the very fact that I thought it was says something about me and the culture I've grown up in, where white appropriation of black culture is so normal.

White Tears won't be for everyone. I would call it a ghost story of sorts, but I've also seen it called a horror story, and I can't argue with that. It's haunting, for sure. The clarity of the first part of the book gives way gradually to the shadows and ambiguity of the second part of the book, but some things are not left ambiguous. I don't have a high tolerance for gruesome violence, and I stay away from anything labeled ‘horror,' but I couldn't put this book down. It's one of the most riveting books I've read in the last year.

This book is bananas. It's grotesque and haunting, and I don't know that I would recommend it widely... but it's also brilliant. I think I'd comp this as Dream Girls meets Get Out, but through a white lens and sicker. Yikes. BUT the examination/critique of whiteness here is accurate, brutal, and necessary in my opinion. Some parts are baffling initially. I thought I didn't “get” the story until almost the last chapter and then it clicked, which is pretty impressive pacing. This might be the most perplexed I have ever been by a book and yet it get 4 stars