JUMP AT THE SUN

This saga of three generations of women in an African-American family is handled capably by the narrator. Myra Lucretia Taylor embodies the three distinct personalities through varied tone, timbre and diction, but her warm rendering of the youngest generation, through the main protagonist, especially keeps the attention and sympathies. As Taylor juggles the dialect of the characters of the 1940s' section and maneuvers through the more enunciated syllables of the modern characters, the narrative moves back and forth among the three stories without any confusion. The panic and dislocation of a career woman, who feels trapped as a mother and housewife, is presented in contrast to the worries of her grandmother, who struggled to find her place in the world against the social strictures of the time. M.R. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2008]