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    Them: A Novel
    Them: A Novel
    Them: A Novel
    Ebook419 pages7 hours

    Them: A Novel

    By Nathan McCall

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    From the “mesmerizing storyteller” (The New Yorker) and author of the bestselling memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler presents a profound novel—in the tradition of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth—that captures the dynamics of class and race in today's urban integrated communities.

    Barlowe Reed is a single, forty-something Black American who rents a ramshackle house on Randolph Street in Atlanta, just a stone’s throw from the historic birth home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Barlowe, who works as a printer, otherwise passes the time reading and hanging out with other men at the corner store. He shares his home and loner existence with a streetwise, twentysomething nephew who is struggling to get his troubled life back on track.

    When Sean and Sandy Gilmore, a young white couple, move in next door, Barlowe and Sandy develop a reluctant, complex friendship as they hold probing—often frustrating—conversations over the backyard fence.

    Members of both households, and their neighbors as well, try to go about their business, tending to their homes and jobs. However, fear and suspicion build—and clashes ensue—with each passing day, as more and more new whites move in and make changes and once familiar people and places disappear.

    Using a blend of superbly developed characters in a story that captures the essence of this country’s struggles with the unsettling realities of gentrification, Nathan McCall has produced a truly great American novel.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtria Books
    Release dateNov 6, 2007
    ISBN9781416554417
    Them: A Novel
    Author

    Nathan McCall

    Nathan McCall, author of Makes Me Wanna Holler, has worked as a journalist for The Washington Post. Currently, he teaches in the African American Studies Department at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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    Reviews for Them

    3.5/5

    56 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Barlowe Reed is a single, African American man living in a home with his nephew in the old Fourth Ward of Atlanta. He is fed up with Caeser (his name for white authority) and continues to work as a printer and hang out with the local black men at the Minimart. Then one day a white couple buys the house next door to Barlowe. Before you know it more white people start moving into the neighborhood and the locals of the old Fourth Ward aren’t pleased. This is a story full of racial tension throughout and the climax is predictable, but very thought provoking. The characters are very simple, but complex and Mr. McCall brings us into the realms of racial prejudice from both sides of the fence. I listened to the audio book which was read superbly by Mr. McCall. This is a well written novel that holds your attention to the end.
    • 5/5
      I think I probably liked this book more as an audio book than I would have in print. The narrator, Mirron Willis, did an excellent job of depicting the characters as he told the story. Both he and the author, Nathan McCall, are African-American and it is very much a book written in the black voice about the black experience. It was very interesting to see how those characters, especially Barlowe, experienced the white characters in the book who, well-intentioned or not, are believable, especially when shown from the outside rather than the inside. It's not a very optimistic story about the cost to the residents of a historically black neighborhood when it is gentrified - and you can read that, goes white. All in all, I'd say this book was quite educational, and I'm glad I "read" it. It was also interesting who the "Them" was at any given point in the story.
    • 4/5
      Very nice read.
    • 5/5
      Nathan McCall is as brutally honest as he was when he wrote "Makes Me Wanna Holler."
      This old white lady loves his writing!
    • 4/5
      A relatively little known author and title, Them caused quite a stir in our group this month. A large majority felt this ‘sleeper’ of a novel was amazingly well written with complex characters leading the under-dramatized plot to a recognised but heart-aching conclusion. Barlowe Reed and his neighbouring folk had found a comfortable existence within the streets of Old Fourth Ward, and it is fair to say that their reaction to ‘whites’ moving in had its own racial taints. But as our discussion revealed, there was no thought or concern on the part of these new residents as to what a white invasion would do to the area. Historically, Caucasians have always considered their influence to be positive, and to be fair to Sandy, she did have the best intensions. But at no point did she really try to understand Barlowe and his position. It was always just a matter of acceptance and move on for her. Easy to do when you have never been denied anything due to who you are!Barlowe himself was an interesting character. We believe that had he been able to articulate to Sandy, and others, what he felt and saw happening, things may have gone a little better. In the end, he had quite a regard for Sandy (if not for Sean) but the gulf was too wide and too many situations miss-read for the outcome to be anything other than what it was. An honest look at cultural divides and the attitudes that keep us that way, this book is certainly not to everyone’s taste, but the surrounding discussion could not have been better, which should clearly put Them on all discerning bookclub lists.
    • 5/5
      Barlowe Reed is a single, African American man living in a home with his nephew in the old Fourth Ward of Atlanta. He is fed up with Caeser (his name for white authority) and continues to work as a printer and hang out with the local black men at the Minimart. Then one day a white couple buys the house next door to Barlowe. Before you know it more white people start moving into the neighborhood and the locals of the old Fourth Ward aren?t pleased. This is a story full of racial tension throughout and the climax is predictable, but very thought provoking. The characters are very simple, but complex and Mr. McCall brings us into the realms of racial prejudice from both sides of the fence. I listened to the audio book which was read superbly by Mr. McCall. This is a well written novel that holds your attention to the end.
    • 2/5
      Nathan makes a good first start in showing the subtle underbelly of racism in America, which has a lot of class and cultural issues we take for granted. He makes a decent start but too often the story gets lost in the transition from one perspective to the next, which made it slow and hard to connect to the characters. I'd love for Nathan to write book with this intent to see how he improves. probably a 2.5.
    • 3/5
      It wasn't the easiest read. Partly because of the subject matter, racial tensions rising as white couples buy up property in a traditionally all black neighbourhood in Atlanta, the birthplace of Martin Luther King. But partly because much of the conversation was written in accent and I found it difficult to lose myself in the story because I was trying to decipher the spelling. Barlowe Reed is a proud but paranoid man. Convinced that Caeser is out to get him (Caeser is his name for white authority, from the govenment to the police to the post office manager) he bears his fears and prejudices under a hatred of flags and patriotism. When white couple Sean and Sandy Gilmore move in next door he is horrified and even wonders why the only white couple in the neighbourhood live next door to him and if it is a plot by Caeser to spy on him. But slowly he strikes up an uneasy friendship with Sandy, to the scorn of the neighbourhood and the horror of her husband, who fears Barlowe and his nephew Tyrone since a misunderstanding resulted in a violent attack. And as more white couples are drawn to the neighbourhood by the promise of cheap property the long term residents fear they are being forced out and violence breaks out with prejudice on both sides.Having not experienced this I at first thought the story was set in the recent past but was surprised a few pages in to find it was actually set post 9-11, as Barlowe at first makes some references to the overuse of flags "since the planes hit" and his hatred of the blind patriotism for a country he sees as his enemy rather than his home.At first Barlowe seemed an unlikable character, prejudiced, self-pitying, ignorant. His constant references to Caeser annoyed me and his behaviour in the post office and his insistance that he was being spied on made me dislike him at first. As the book went on though, and I learned his story, I liked him more and more.Sandy wasn't particularly likable either, determined to buy her home and live in that particular neighbourhood to prove to her father and her estate agent that she wasn't prejudiced or racist. She had a touch too much of the do-gooder about her for me to like her and by the end of the book she proved that her ideals masked the same fears and prejudices as the other white families in the neighbourhood.Sandy's husband, Sean, was worse, going along with Sandy and her desire to make the world a better place since he first met her at college, simply because he found her attractive. He doesn't share her ideals, expecting that he could fit in with her by donating to charity every month and occasionally tutoring a black child or two. Yet almost from the moment they move in to the house he is frightened, unfriendly and unwilling to make friends with anyone other than the other white families in the neighbourhood.The book was bleak, painted a sad picture of the state of racial understanding in a day and age where we should really be beyond the prejudices shown by almost all the characters in this book. Hope was offered in the uneasy relationship between Barlowe and Sandy that if people make an effort it is possible to understand your neighbours and learn from them and the final conversation and scenes in the book showed that at least those two had changed for the better thanks to their friendship with the other.I am not sure if I would recommend this book but I will be keeping it and reading it again.

    Book preview

    Them - Nathan McCall

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