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A Novel
by April Reynolds
In this second novel by the award-winning novelist, a trio of women in East Harlem come together in friendship and tragedy when a murder occurs and a neighborhood tries to seek justice from a system that has forgotten them.
We're in East Harlem, in the mid-eighties, and the large and formidable (some say crazy woman) Twin Johnson discovers the body of Anita's boy, Tyrone, on the sidewalk. She does just what her uncle, who runs his basement crack den as a family business, warned her never to do: she calls the police, setting in motion a cycle of events that expand the consciousness of this struggling community. Anita, a postal worker, army widow, and church lady, is determined to solve her son's murder, but her quest for justice rattles the neighborhood, which itself is like a complex character in this teeming novel, with its Mets fans and gossips, immigrant shop owners and sneaker-obsessed teens on its garbage-piled streets. The local dreamers include a charismatic man of the cloth, a teenage girl with a Whitney Houston voice and no prospects at all, and Anita's opinionated friend, Wanda, whose own truant son the police harass and arrest on a regular basis, and who brings both blessings and curses into Anita's exploded world.
Anita, Wanda, and Twin, the power triad of this vibrant novel, are all drawn into the basement den as the reader sinks into their rich backstories. Will they be able to break its spell? Will the Reverend's pressure on the authorities to find Tyrone's killer yield answers? In the end, in the NY Mets' banner summer of 1986, this community will come together to mourn, find justice, and shape their dreams as best they can.
"Reading this engrossing novel is like watching East Harlem morph into the shape
of a shabby but tenacious dreamer imprisoned in a time and place where dreams can
be snuffed out as haphazardly as the lives of its young. A crafty murder mystery in
the multihued form of an urban symphony." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Readers will savor this rich tableau of a resilient community." —Publishers Weekly
"Captivating... Vividly drawn... with sharp, enduring voices... Reynolds transports the reader to a gritty world blighted by urban decay yet full of resilience and strength." —Booklist
"Intense and dreamlike, The Shape of Dreams is a vivid portrait of a community reckoning with violence, addiction, and surveillance in 1980s Harlem. In captivating prose, April Reynolds asks us to consider what we owe our children and each other in life's darkest moments." —Leila Mottley, author of Nightcrawling and The Girls Who Grew Big
"The Shape of Dreams offers a loving tribute to Harlem and the restorative power of female friendship while exposing the tiny soul fractures sustained by good people trying to get by in a broken world. With exquisite grace and reverence, Reynolds explores the inevitable heartbreaks of motherhood and wearying loneliness as the three women at the novel's center seek justice for a murdered son. Reynolds captivates as much as she reminds us that in the midst of unspeakable tragedy, the strength of the human spirit endures. Elegant, powerful and truly unforgettable." —Laura Warrell, author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm
This information about The Shape of Dreams was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
April Reynolds is the author of the novel Knee-Deep in Wonder, which won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award and the PEN American Center: Beyond Margins Award. She co-wrote The Red Rooster Cookbook with Marcus Samuelson and is co-editor, with Henry Louis Gates Jr., of The Toni Morrison Reader and The Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Reynolds has taught creative writing at New York University and the 92nd Street Y, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. A former resident of East Harlem, she now lives in Astoria, Queens.
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