Genre: Book
Grade: A-/B+
Notable People: Walter Mosley
Title: John Woman
Review: Mosley is back! The creator of the wonderful Easy Rawlins post war LA Noir series, periodically steps back into free standing novels…and this is a long awaited doozy. Complex, haunting, dark and at times, funny….a sweeping story of a young Black man , raised by a self-taught, share-croppers’ son, bed-ridden mystic and a wild gangster- involved lower east side Italian woman (separately). The tale wanders form the Alphabet –city mean streets of New York to the Arizona desert…and the transformation of young Cornelius Jones in to the Deconstructionist historian working at a cult university in the dessert. Murder, mayhem, dangerous right wing organizations, Zen-like prostitutes….this book is a whirlwind….Not for everyone….very heady and rich in language, Freudian analytic diatribes and metaphors galore. I found it hard going for the first half of the book, but enjoyed the ride once a groove was established with language an complexity. Very unpredictable.