So many reviews start off with readers saying how they DO NOT like Oprah's book selections. I think I have loved every one I have read. This was no different. I loved this author's writing style. This book moved so quickly I read it in under 24 hours. I loved most of the characters except for the ones you were supposed to hate. There were a few hard core, raunchy scenes provided by crack addicts that were shocking. I may be back to edit this once I can express myself better. I can't put into words how nice the core players were with each other.

Whoa. This book was fantastic. Pearl (and I’m using her first name in it’s highest honor), has a great way of storytelling. Making you feel involved. Yearning for every word- not trying to miss a beat. I couldn’t put the book down (hence it’s quick reading). Pearl is such a master at writing in a way that makes you feel like someone is retelling the story to you irl. I couldn’t ask for a better ending. A better plot. A better anything. Pearl has done it all + then-some .

The topics explored + discussed in this book is very deep + I only would recommend to mature minds. Topics such as HIV/AIDS, Black-on-Black violence, just to name a few. Pearl is able to dice into these subjects and serve them to us on a plate. Educating you while entertaining you in a story that will have you hooked. (Imma stop here b/c I don’t wanna give away too much- just read it sis/bro.)

This is definitely one of my most fav reads this year and I’m eager to try and get my hands on the sequel to this series. Bravo.

xx,

V.

It took a few chapters for me to really get into this book, but once I did, I couldn't put it down. The narrator's voice felt refreshingly honest. The suspense built up in a way that felt natural and not forced or contrived. There were definitely some plot elements I wish I had been warned about in advance (see content warnings below) but ultimately they felt like they strengthened the story and weren't just there for shock value. Overall I really enjoyed reading this!

cw: graphic descriptions of physical and sexual violence including child abuse and intimate partner violence, verbal abuse related to HIV/AIDS status, threatened gun violence, religious abuse, alcohol/drug abuse

Once I got two thirds of the way through this book I kept putting it down and walking away for a while. Then I had to hurry back and pick it up again because the writing calls out and pulls the reader along. It was like eating an ice cream cone on a hot day: So delicious, so thoroughly engrossing, but over much too soon.
My rating is in appreciation for the way the words are put together in such a way that the reader doesn't even notice that there are words at all, just a fine well-told story.

Entertaining chick lit with flashes of true wisdom.

Complaints: 1. the denouement is truncated, as if an editor told Cleage to cut 60 pages or so; and 2. there are frequent abjurations in grammar, especially popular with Cleage in opening sentences: "Me and Joyce started ..."

I suppose Cleage is using the common parlance to embrace middlingly-educated readers but
I don't think such glaring erring is necessary to reach them, the test for rule-defiance in English writing. I am those same readers' English teacher, and I am trying to get them to write, "Joyce and I started ..."

My friend and hers (there is a single degree of separation between Cleage and me) suggests the pattern is a carry-over from play-writing, all dialog. She gets a pass for grammar, says he, since she can sell it, a sort of Steven-Kingsian, transactional view of literary success.

What Looks Like Crazy ... is a good read but I think it could be better with about a dozen usage edits, a useless criticism since the book is nearly 30 years old.

A very real story of how the collapse of the factories in Detroit affected surrounding towns. No jobs for adults, no jobs for their kids and the lure of drug money. After a positive HIV test, Ava stops back in her hometown in Idlewild, MI on her way to CA. The community is a black and indigenous people only. During her stay she reconnects with an old friend and meets the creepy new pastor and his wife. It must be the difference in time frames because his predilections were evident from the start.
The book is about black hair, families, desperation, grief, bigotry, and how a fatal diagnosis can change you. I loved it. It was at times quite brutal, but so can life be.

I grabbed it after i saw the Oprah book club circle at the top. I am very naughty. I am not an Oprah worshipper (never watched her show in entirety EVER) but after picking up books with the 'O' in the corner over the years and thoroughly enjoying them, it's an easy sell for me.

Well, it's not one of those typical Black books 'cook out/'sangin' at church/story revolving around some Biblical parable. So that's an A+. It has some 'erotica' without being vulgar and disgusting. Another A+. All the book seemed to suddenly deflate at the end somehow. It wasn't terrible. Wasn't great, but wasn't terrible either.

(don't think it should be a book of the month club choice but hey i don't make that call).

It's probably the only story about an AIDs patient who has a 'happy ending' I've ever read. And somehow the whole:

AVA: I have AIDS...
EDDIE: Do you want to have sex with me?
AVA: Yes...
EDDIE: we just have to use a condom right?
*passionate sex*

Seems VERY unrealistic. She didn't say she had the clap she said she had a disease that is INCURABLE and TERMINAL. You'll die a pretty hideous death. No matter how much you like someone starting off in a relationship, I think you'd want to wait at least a couple of days after hearing that have AIDs to hop in the sack. Or maybe I'm just a self-righteous prude.... But I guess it's good of the author to dispel the many misconceptions of AIDs.

Second, wasn't eddie in the military when Ava was only 8? So he's at least 10yrs older than her if not more. That's kinda gross having a relationship with best friend's wife's baby sister who he watched grow up... Man I am destroying this book! but it wasn't too bad, not too bad...

It did show Black men in wonderful light (by way of Eddie) and that dashing bit where he goes "If I can't protect you I can't love you" *turns into puddle of goo* If a man would say that to me earnestly, he could roll me home in a barrel (i'm probably joking)

I'm done!

Ava Johnson stops in her old hometown of Idlewood to visit her sister before going on to California to start a new life. Ava soon becomes embroiled in the "big-city problems" that have come to her idyllic hometown as she helps her sister work with the teenage mothers and their babies and as she tries to make sense of the reality that is her new life. Gritty but written with a light touch, Pearl Cleague doesn't shy away from the realities facing many people these days; one feels gut punched, hopeful, furious, and delighted when reading this book. It is my second time reading it and won't be my last.

My Original Notes (1998):

It took me a while to gain interest in this novel, but once I did, I was hooked! I found myself caring about Ava and Eddie, as well as the baby, Imani. Touching without being too sentimental. A good read!

My Current Thoughts:

Another book of which I have no recollection. I'm pretty sure I read it with an online book group, which probably got the suggestion from Oprah's book club.

This book has been on my “To Read” list for a long time. I had no idea what it was about, only that my sister read it once and gave it 4 stars. I was not expecting a book about black poverty, AIDS and crack. But if Tara liked it (and more importantly, Oprah) I would try it. I liked it. It is raunchy in places, and rough around the edges, but I liked the fight for good. And the last line of the book says it all. “What looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight”.

Good - not the most organic-feeling passages of dialogue of all time, but still good. Sometimes a little clunky in stressing the Moral of the Story, but Ava and her family go through so much, it's partially forgivable.

It's a very honest, frank story, in a lot of ways - definitely wouldn't rec to anyone who's not a fan of explicit discussions of sex - but that's where its power is. That, and also in that Wild Eddie is a fantasy-fulfilling dreamboat in all the best ways.

I really enjoyed reading this one. I think I am now a huge fan of the genre of books that was very recently "realistic/contemporary fiction" but are now solidly "historical fiction" because they are a tad dated. I feel like I'm going back in time, but in a realistic way, which is quite fun. Having almost no context for Pearl Cleage and only vaguely hearing about this book at one time or another, it was a refreshing surprise to read something that felt so authentic and natural. I really enjoyed the protagonists of the story, Ava, Joyce and Eddie. At times I was really cracking up despite how serious most of the book actually was, and the romance was a nice surprise. I found the way that Cleage detailed Ava's battle with HIV and HIV/AIDs stigma to be interesting, having not been conscious in the 1990s to experience that.

The reasons I'm giving this four stars instead of five relate to a few things. For one, while I thought the protagonists were very fleshed out, I did not feel the same way about the villians in this story. It's been a while since I've read an adult book where there are classic villains -- there are about four in this story. I thought that made the plot feel a bit more fairy tale like than it needed to be, especially because (save for a few quips about the crack epidemic) most of the villains were quite one dimensional. And even when we eventually learn one of the villain's origin story, it feels quite rushed, like it would have been nice to have some hint about that throughout the book. Before I note the other thing -- full disclaimer that I realize this book was written just around the time I was born so I know mainstream Black politics, discourse, and sentiments can transform in a generation. That said, reading some of the commentary in 2022 was hard. The book is quite authentic in the sense that I have heard many speak like this about people who are dealing with addiction, who are not the best parents, etc. But the reason it made me a bit uneasy is that the protagonist still seemed to flirt with this idea that you are a bad person if you cannot overcome certain obstacles. I think more nuance could have been applied to some of the villains in this book, because that's usually how life goes.

I would recommend this book, since it's very refreshingly not of the times, but with the disclaimer that is not of the times.