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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Nov 2019, 288 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2020, 288 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Lisa Butts
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Following her National Book Award–nominated debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton returns with this equally elegant and historically inspired story of survivors and healers, of black women and their black sons, set in the American South.
In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine's family.
Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine's descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays her grandchild to be her companion. But Martha's behavior soon becomes erratic, then even threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine's converge.
The Revisioners explores the depths of women's relationships―powerful women and marginalized women, healers and survivors. It is a novel about the bonds between a mother and a child, the dangers that upend those bonds. At its core, The Revisioners ponders generational legacies, the endurance of hope, and the undying promise of freedom.
Excerpt
The Revisioners
It was King who told me we forgot the photograph. Twelve years old, but he'd been washing his own clothes since he was eight, and was often the one to remind me to take the trash out on Thursdays. I didn't intend to place all that responsibility on him—he was a child—but he identified the holes in my capacity and dove into them. While I was filing motions for Mr. Jeff at Wilkerson & Associates, he was microwaving neat squares of beef lasagna. And now this, the picture my grandmother's great-grandmother had had taken of herself, standing at the edge of her farm. Miss Josephine. Her husband had just died, and you could not miss that in her eyes, the loneliness. But you could also glimpse the pride: the rows of corn, their stalks double her height, the chickens at her feet. A smokehouse with shingles planked toward the roof like two hands in prayer.
"We could go back and get it," King says.
I shake my head. "It's too late," I say, and maybe it is and ...
Sexton's deft plotting creates one of the best, most layered generational family sagas in recent memory. She skillfully demonstrates how the past informs the present, and how we are all the sum of not just our personal choices but also the intricate webs of our family histories. The metaphysical connections between Josephine, Gladys and Ava are creatively drawn and beautifully rendered, and these relationships elevate the novel to truly impressive heights...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown Up
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's writing is graceful and stylish, her truths relevant and necessary—it's just so exhilarating to read her. I was mesmerized by The Revisioners, an impeccable novel of magic, loss, and family, all anchored by generations of powerful women. Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
I read this wonderful novel nearly in a single sitting, carried along by its exemplary pacing and structure, its rich cast of characters, and its deft explorations of trauma, cruelty, survival, and love. Written in a haunted present and a past that's not past, The Revisioners honors the living and the lost in a painful, tender testament to the power of fiction. R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
I was mesmerized by The Revisioners, a time-bending epic about family, desire, strength, and terror, as well as the possibly supernatural power of the stories we tell ourselves. Was mesmerized? Am mesmerized, will remain mesmerized. Sexton's novel is extraordinary, and its effects will go on and on.In Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's The Revisioners, mixed race protagonist Ava moves into her aging white grandmother's ostentatious New Orleans mansion in order to help out, and also to save money so she can one day afford to buy a home of her own. Throughout the novel, Sexton paints a vivid picture of the income inequality evident in different areas of the city.
In a 2018 report by the Brookings Institute on income inequality in American cities, New Orleans came in at number four (out of the 100 most populous cities in the country). Brookings notes that the 20th percentile of households earn an average yearly income of just $12,373, while the 95th percentile earn an average of $203,254. (To put things in perspective, the average ...
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