5/10/2023 0 Comments The Untelling by Tayari Jones![]() who also smoothed on a layer of pretty from a jar” - this according to Chaurisse, who, alas, is ordinary brown, with a hairpiece. Dana is a “silver girl,” one of those “natural beauties. The effect is subtly devastating when Dana begins to intrude upon Chaurisse’s narrative, deepening the reader’s interest we understand it’s just a matter of time before the unknown becomes the known. ![]() ![]() ![]() Jones gives us almost all of Dana’s story in part one, then all of Chaurisse’s in part two. While other writers might have chosen a back-and-forth narrative - first Dana, then Chaurisse, then Dana, etc. Chaurisse Witherspoon, who spends a lot of time in her mother’s beauty parlor, believes she has a normal family. Dana Yarboro knows the truth and feels she is a secret. Tayari Jones, author of the novels “ Leaving Atlanta” and “ The Untelling,” has chosen an unusual structure to reveal her story of two African American teenage girls sharing the same father in the same Georgia town. Which family does the man love most? The family to whom he confides everything, thus hurting it in the process? Or the family to whom he tells nothing, allowing it to live in ignorant normality, but always with the possibility of a terrible surprise? One knows about the other the other doesn’t. ![]()
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