What readers think of The Turner House, plus links to write your own review.

The author did a fantastic job of describing the dynamics in large families (there are 8 children in mine), and the family and old-time, southern superstitions that take on life and get passed down from generation to generation. Cha Cha isn't the only sibling that saw the "haint" when he was young, and he mentioned elderly relatives that knew what to do to get rid of "haints". His dad didn't say they weren't real, just that they weren't in Detroit where he moved to give his family a better life. The author also does a fantastic job of describing the once thriving City of Detroit where the Turner children were raised, and telling us the factors that led to it's destruction: Black flight, crack, gun violence, and real estate fraud - burning property for profit, squatters, and fraudulent short sales which led to the bottoming out of property values. My only criticism is the over use of flashing forward and backwards. I listened to the audio version, which doesn't make it easy to keep up with this kind of storyline. I had to listen a few times to finally get the correct timeline of events. But overall, The Turner House is an very enjoyable read, especially for a Detroit native.

"The eldest six of Francis and Viola Turner’s thirteen children claimed that the big room of the house on Yarrow Street was haunted for at least one night. A ghost—a haint, if you will—tried to pull Cha-Cha out of the big room’s second-story window." So begins The Turner House. Angela Flournoy's novel gives us a glimpse into one family's experience during the Great Migration, 6 million African Americans who left the rural south to try and find work in the cities of the north. When Francis Turner leaves Arkansas to find work in Detroit, he leaves behind a young wife and newborn baby. This begins a journey that the reader gets to share from 1945 to 2008. His family, thirteen children in all, finally settle in their house on Yarrow street where the oldest child,nicknamed Cha Cha, first viewed his haint, or ghost, as a boy. His father quickly dismisses his experience, telling him "there ain't no ghosts in Detroit." Years later at 62 and with a bad hip, Cha Cha finds himself the paternal head of the family, and is unsure of what to do with the now abandoned house whose neighborhood is overrun with drugs and crime. Flournoy provides various storylines. Lelah, the youngest Turner child, now at 41, struggles with a gambling addiction as she tries to maintain a relationship with her daughter. The family matriarch, Viola is at the end of her life, but we are given the flashbacks to '45 when she was left behind with a new baby, trying to deal with the 18 month absence of her new husband. Mostly though, we sympathize with Cha Cha who is seeing a therapist to help flesh out whether his ghost visions are real or in his head. What is in his head though is his attraction to the therapist. Throughout all the troubles, the novel celebrates the family and builds to a big reunion at the end. The characters are well drawn and the writing both clever and observant.
Flournoy received a National Book Award nomination for this work.