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P.G.
County by Connie Briscoe Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Appearances Connie Briscoe’s latest novel, P.G.
County, takes readers into the lives of an ensemble of characters for
whom appearances make all the difference in the world. The real location is
Prince Georges County, Maryland, adjacent to Washington, D.C., and known
locally as P.G. County. Briscoe uses all the demographics of the real place
to portray characters who fit the locale. Wealthy African Americans are
building big houses in this county, but still have to travel for miles to
find shopping venues that match their income. Issues of who is black and who
is white permeate the struggles many characters face. Briscoe presents some
characters who are comfortable with themselves as they are, and others who
desire to project an image of being better than others. There’s a soap opera
quality of unfaithfulness and struggles with marital relationships throughout
the book, overdone more often than not. Subtlety would have made this a
better book. Here’s an excerpt from page 92, the end of
Chapter 11, a conversation between Kenyatta and his mother, Pearl: “ … ‘you never
like it when I date outside our race. You always wanted me to take advantage of
their schools their recreational facilities, but’ - Readers looking for insight into what it
means to be black in this world will find some images on the pages of P.G.
County that contribute toward understanding. Readers will also find stereotyped
characters and weak exposition of what motivates those characters to behave
in the ways they do. As fictional social commentary, P.G.
County takes us inside one part of the United States where African
Americans are the majority of the population, and we can watch the collision
of their pasts, the present and their aspirations. Steve Hopkins, October 9, 2002 |
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ă 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the December 2002
issue of Executive
Times For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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