conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled The Untelling about Aria, Keisha, Dwayne with the genre: Literature & Fiction, United States
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The legacy of a fatal accident haunts surviving family members in the author's deep-felt second novel (after <I>Leaving Atlanta</I>). As a young girl, native Atlantan Aria Jackson lost her father and baby sister in a car accident; her inability to comfort her dying father, and her mother's failed effort to save the baby, have damaged their relationship. After graduating from Spelman, Aria goes to work at a local literacy center, where she is drawn to outspoken Keisha Evers, a young teen pregnant with her second child. When Aria believes she is pregnant, she confides in Keisha before sharing the news with her fianc&eacute;, Dwayne. But when mysterious cramping sends her to the doctor, Aria learns that she is not pregnant but instead experiencing very early menopause. Reluctant to tell Dwayne the truth, Aria claims to have lost the baby. Dwayne's desire for a child remains strong, and Aria watches with growing envy as Keisha's pregnancy progresses. When a second doctor confirms Aria's condition, she is forced to make difficult choices with the shadow of her past looming over her. The first-person narration is convincing and genuine, and the author handles her material with sensitivity and sympathy. This strong sophomore effort will bolster her reputation. <I>(Apr. 18)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first four paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Untelling
  Major love to my friends who lent their eyes to any of the six major incarnations of this novel. These folks helped me see what was good but told me how to fix what needed fixing: Barbara Ann Posey Jones, Deanna Bryant, Ginney Fowler, João Costa Vargas, Chad Unrein, Maxine Kennedy, Jafari Allen, David Van Fossen, Kiyana Sakena Horton, John W. Holman, Aisha Moon, June Aldridge, and Eric Beaumont.
  Linda Eldridge is everything a bartender should be. Scott Vaughn taught me to relax. Renee Simms helps me understand perspective. Jewell Parker Rhodes, Crystal Wilkinson, Merrill Fietell, Monique Truong, and Suji Kwok Kim are the counterargument to all the snarky things people say about writers.
  Mr. Ron Carlson helped me at the start of this project; you will find his fingerprints everywhere. Ms. Pearl Cleage is one smart colored woman.
  I want to acknowledge the generous assistance of the MacDowell Colony, the Family and Friends of Gerald Freund, the Corporation of Yaddo, John and Joan Jakobson, the LEF Foundation, Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Ledig House International Writers Colony, Le Chateau de Lavigny International Writers Colony, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Wesleyan Summer Writers Conference, East Tennessee State University, and the G.E. Foundation.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Deirdre, McNamer.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Untelling
  Major love to my friends who lent their eyes to any of the six major incarnations of this novel. These folks helped me see what was good but told me how to fix what needed fixing: Barbara Ann Posey Jones, Deanna Bryant, Ginney Fowler, João Costa Vargas, Chad Unrein, Maxine Kennedy, Jafari Allen, David Van Fossen, Kiyana Sakena Horton, John W. Holman, Aisha Moon, June Aldridge, and Eric Beaumont. 
  Linda Eldridge is everything a bartender should be. Scott Vaughn taught me to relax. Renee Simms helps me understand perspective. Jewell Parker Rhodes, Crystal Wilkinson, Merrill Fietell, Monique Truong, and Suji Kwok Kim are the counterargument to all the snarky things people say about writers. Deirdre McNamer was an inspiration even before we met. 
  Mr. Ron Carlson helped me at the start of this project; you will find his fingerprints everywhere. Ms. Pearl Cleage is one smart colored woman. 
  I want to acknowledge the generous assistance of the MacDowell Colony, the Family and Friends of Gerald Freund, the Corporation of Yaddo, John and Joan Jakobson, the LEF Foundation, Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Ledig House International Writers Colony, Le Chateau de Lavigny International Writers Colony, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Wesleyan Summer Writers Conference, East Tennessee State University, and the G. E. Foundation.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: four more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: There are certain concepts that you shouldn't think about when things go wrong. Fairness is one of them. You can't think about what you do and don't deserve. Hermione told me this years ago. "That's how you go crazy. Look at Mama. And anyway, who told you life was going to be fair?" I know that question is supposed to be rhetorical, but everyone tells you that the world is fair, or at least they let you know that it is supposed to be. All the work we did here at LARC and even my mother's work at the Institute. All that talk about leveling playing fields. That was about fairness. But what Hermione meant was that only a fool believes that she will get what's coming to her. That she will get only what she deserves.
  And I wasn't naive. I never believed myself to have a charmed life. I wasn't like Rochelle, who assumed that people would like her, that landlords would be honest. She never counted her change, just stuffed it in her pocket, because in her universe things worked out. There are all manner of scams and cheats in my world. I have never been convinced that God is good. But there were some things I thought were unassailable. How many plastic dial packs of birth control pills had I added to Atlanta's landfills. Maybe landfills and pollution were no longer my responsibility, since I no longer had a direct stake in the next generation? Again I wondered how exactly a person could tell when she was having a nervous breakdown.
  She was silenced by the other girls, who zipped their bags and slung them over their shoulders, eager to make it to appointments that I couldn't imagine.
  She leaned in and pressed her cheek to my forehead. I was overwhelmed by her smell, the combined scent of nail polish and banana taffy.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At the end of the summer, before the dogwood trees blazed with red leaves, I returned Dwayne's ring, snug again in its velvet box. I offered it to him through a hole in the screen door. Taking it without brushing my fingers with his own, Dwayne slid it into his roomy pocket, asking just one question: "Why?" As he stumbled down the crumbling porch steps, I moved my lips, shaping the empty air, my words clotted in my throat.
  Now the engagement ring is there in the shoebox where he stores all his disappointments, high on a closet shelf. Dwayne suspects that this is all there is. Maybe he believes that he will have occasion to touch the ring again, to tell someone else what he understands of his aunt Iola and of me, women frightened by the noise of the truth. But I am different now; today nothing scares me more than the hollow clatter of secrets.
  There is balm in the telling, and in the hearing too. These words, these truths, will ride on the air like a ragged scrap of song. With every lamp burning I will speak while Dwayne touches my hands and listens. I will ask him what he knows about the dogwoods, crooked and ashamed, their stained petals an annual remembrance.
  Although Hermione is right about a great many things, she was wrong about the nature of things gone by. This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.