The Turner House
Angela Flournoy, 2015
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544705166
Summary
The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father.
The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs.
But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage.
The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and shapes—their family’s future.
Praised by Ayana Mathis as “utterly moving” and “un-putdownable,” The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It’s a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1984-85
• Rasised—southern Califonia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Southern California; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—N/A
Angela Flourny is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Summer 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times Sunday Book Review Editors' Choice.
She is a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree for 2015. Her fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, and she has written for the New York Times, New Republic and Los Angeles Times.
Flournay was raised in southern California by a mother from Los Angeles and a father from Detroit where she spent summers visiting her grandparents. She received her B.A. from the University of Southern California and her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has taught at the University of Iowa and The Writer's Foundry at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn. She is joining the faculty at Southern New Hampshire University's low-residency MFA program in Spring 2016. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A]n engrossing and remarkably mature first novel…Flournoy's prose is artful without being showy. She takes the time to flesh out the world…In her accretion of resonant details, Flournoy recounts the history of Detroit with more sensitivity than any textbook could…That Flournoy's main characters are black is central to this book, and yet her treatment of that essential fact is never essentializing. Flournoy gets at the universal through the patient observation of one family's particulars. In this assured and memorable novel, she provides the feeling of knowing a family from the inside out, as we would wish to know our own.
Matthew Thomas - New York Times Book Review
An elegant and assured debut.
Washington Post
With The Turner House, Flournoy has written an utterly unsentimental love story that, rather like the house on Yarrow Street, manages to make room for everyone.
Christian Science Monitor
One of the many strengths of this book—entertaining, well-written and keenly insightful without calling attention to itself—is its clear-eyed, unsentimental vision. Flournoy never ignores the problems afflicting family and place—a 13-child clan and Detroit—even as she pays homage to both.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Turner House [is] not only a first novel but a lamentation for and a paean to Detroit, from the mid-1940s to the present day, a funny yet heart-wrenching book, both beautiful and revealing of all the ways close human beings relate to one another (and to places and things) over time.
Buffalo News
Nobody can take you from joyful to infuriated as fast as your brother or sister. Similarly, the ups and downs of the 13 siblings that populate The Turner House, the first novel by Angela Flournoy, whip from laugh-out-loud to heart-crushing. Still, she proves even bonds that have stretched a mile long have the ability to snap back.
Essence Magazine
The Turner House speeds along like a page-turner. Flournoy’s richly wrought prose and intimate, vivid dialogue make this novel feel like settling deeply into the family armchair.
Entertainment Weekly
Flournoy has written an epic that feels deeply personal...Flournoy’s finely tuned empathy infuses her characters with a radiant humanity.
Oprah Magazine
Epic, ambitious and strikingly executed, The Turner House is an impressive debut novel. In the grand tradition of family dramas by the late Bebe Moore Campbell, it is lively and entertaining, with subtle humor and engaging voice. Flournoy manages the difficult feat of skillfully telling the stories of 13 children, their parents and accompanying spouses and love interests in an irresistible style. Here we have a deeply satisfying portrayal of relationships among those to whom we, for better or worse, are related by blood.
The Root
[A] dynamite Detroit debut.... The Turner House belongs on the shelf with the very finest books about one of America’s most dynamic, tortured, and resilient cities.... There are cracklingly alive scenes inside pawn shops and factories, casinos and living rooms. Flournoy has a deft touch with the verbal and psychological sparring between spouses, siblings, and parents and children.... One of Flournoy’s great achievements is that she doesn’t draw attention to the fact that virtually every one of her characters is black. This is just part of the novel’s oxygen and furniture, a Detroit given. Therein lies its quiet strength...Angela Flournoy is an exciting new talent whose debut has enriched Detroit’s flowering literature. Read The Turner House, and I’m sure you’ll join me in waiting, eagerly, to see what its gifted author comes up with next.
Millions
What is rarer, and much more difficult, in a story is to involve numerous family members as point-of-view characters. Faulkner set the standard with As I Lay Dying, and contemporary incarnations like A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg have run the spectrum. This is exactly the challenge that Angela Flournoy takes on in her debut novel The Turner House, with admirable success.... The Turner House is a wonderfully crafted glimpse into the intimacy of family, and shows immense promise for Flournoy.
Bustle
(Starred review.) Flournoy’s debut is a lively, thoroughly engaging family saga with a cast of fully realized characters.... [She] evokes the intricacies of domestic situations and sibling relationships, depicting how each of the Turners’ lives has been shaped by the social history of their generation. She handles time and place with a veteran’s ease as the narrative swings between decades....absorbing.
Publishers Weekly
Debut novelist Flournoy limns the fate of African Americans who have seen their hard-won success in reaching the middle class in a single generation blown to bits by our continuing economic malaise.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Encompassing a multitude of themes, including aging and parenthood, this is a compelling read that is funny and moving in equal measure.
Booklist
What makes The Turner House profound is its reality, its observation of a family so diverse and well-drawn that they seem real.... We rarely find such an honest portrait of what it means to be a sibling—defined by your differences as much as your similarities—as the one Flournoy gives us.
BookPage
A complicated portrait of the modern American family emerges in Flournoy's debut novel.... Flournoy's writing is precise and sharp, and despite several loose ends...the novel draws readers to the Turner family almost magnetically. A talent to watch.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the book, characters struggle with the concept of belonging—to blood relations, in-laws, and even the city of Detroit. What does it mean to “belong” in a group? How do characters come to terms with their own feelings of belonging by the end of the novel?
2. The city of Detroit plays a large role in the way characters see themselves, particularly for Francis Turner in the 1940s. How does the city itself contribute to the story of the Turner family? Can you imagine a similar story taking place elsewhere, or is the story inextricably tied to Detroit?
3. Cha-Cha sees himself as the patriarch of the family, but he also has trouble getting his siblings to listen to him. In what ways does Cha-Cha’s view of himself as the leader prevent his siblings from trusting or respecting him?
4. In their final meeting (p. 241), Alice tells Cha-Cha that she thinks his haint has made him feel extraordinary, and that she doesn’t think he really wants to let it go. Do you agree with her observation? What might the haint provide to Cha-Cha that he otherwise lacks in his life?
5. Alice describes Cha-Cha as the prime minister of his family, and Viola as the queen; she has the title, but is not concerned with day-to-day governance. What is your impression of Viola when you first meet her in the novel, and how does that impression change over time?
6. As the baby, Lelah thinks she has missed out on many of the best moments and secrets in Turner family history. How might her role as the youngest have contributed to her addiction to gambling? Do you think she has truly turned a corner by the novel’s end?
7. Lelah and David become close very quickly. Why do you think Lelah is drawn to David, and why does David not break things off when he finds out about Lelah staying on Yarrow Street?
8. Troy is the only sibling not present at the party that takes place the end of the novel. Did you get the impression that he is on the path to change? Why or why not?
9. Both Francis and Cha-Cha have a precarious relationship with belief, both in religion and the supernatural. How does each character’s beliefs shift over time, and what effect do those changes have on their relationship to others?
10. Compare and contrast Lelah and Cha-Cha’s reactions to the news of Viola’s worsened condition. What do their reactions tell us about their similarities and differences? What do we learn about their roles in the family?
11. The move from Arkansas to Detroit is very important to Turner family history, and it places them among the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who moved North during the Great Migration. How is Francis and Viola’s relationship changed by the move? How do the challenges they face in Detroit contribute to the way they raise their children?
12. At its core, do you see the Turners as a strongly bonded family? What does it mean for a family to be bonded, especially when people move further away from one another and start their own families?
(Questions from the author's website.)