Ruby (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) (Random House Large Print), by Cynthia Bond
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Ruby (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) (Random House Large Print), by Cynthia Bond
Best PDF Ebook Ruby (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) (Random House Large Print), by Cynthia Bond
The newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection The epic, unforgettable story of a man determined to protect the woman he loves from the town desperate to destroy her, this beautiful and devastating debut heralds the arrival of a major new voice in fiction. Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby Bell, “the kind of pretty it hurt to look at,” has suffered beyond imagining, so as soon as she can, she flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York. Ruby quickly winds her way into the ripe center of the city—the darkened piano bars and hidden alleyways of the Village—all the while hoping for a glimpse of the red hair and green eyes of her mother. When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, thirty-year-old Ruby finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. With the terrifying realization that she might not be strong enough to fight her way back out again, Ruby struggles to survive her memories of the town’s dark past. Meanwhile, Ephram must choose between loyalty to the sister who raised him and the chance for a life with the woman he has loved since he was a boy.Full of life, exquisitely written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a transcendent novel of passion and courage. This wondrous page-turner rushes through the red dust and gossip of Main Street, to the pit fire where men swill bootleg outside Bloom’s Juke, to Celia Jennings’s kitchen, where a cake is being made, yolk by yolk, that Ephram will use to try to begin again with Ruby. Utterly transfixing, with unforgettable characters, riveting suspense, and breathtaking, luminous prose, Ruby offers an unflinching portrait of man’s dark acts and the promise of the redemptive power of love.
Ruby (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) (Random House Large Print), by Cynthia Bond - Amazon Sales Rank: #2047845 in Books
- Brand: Bond, Cynthia
- Published on: 2015-03-17
- Released on: 2015-03-17
- Format: Large Print
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.19" h x .99" w x 6.05" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 464 pages
Ruby (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) (Random House Large Print), by Cynthia Bond From Booklist *Starred Review* Ephram Jennings, the son of a backwoods preacher, has been in love with the beautiful Ruby Bell ever since childhood. But Ruby has been so badly used by the men in her small African American town of Liberty, Texas, that she flees for New York City as soon as she is able, in search of the mother who abandoned her. When Ruby’s best friend dies, Ruby returns home, only to succumb to the bad memories that haunt her still. Once sharply dressed and coiffed, she now wanders the streets with ripped clothing and vacant eyes. But Ephram still sees her as the lighthearted girl with pigtails, running free in the woods. And so he begins his long, sweet courtship, bringing her a homemade cake, cleaning her filthy house, and always treating her with kindness. At long last, out from under his overbearing sister’s dominion, he feels himself come alive. But the church folks in town view their relationship as the work of the devil and seek to bring Ephram back to God and to cast out Ruby. In her first novel, Bond immerses readers in a fully realized world, one scarred by virulent racism and perverted rituals but also redeemed by love. Graphic in its descriptions of sexual violence and suffering, this powerful, explosive novel is, at times, difficult to read, presenting a stark, unflinching portrait of dark deeds and dark psyches. --Joanne Wilkinson
Review “Channeling the lyrical phantasmagoria of early Toni Morrison and the sexual and racial brutality of the 20th century east Texas, Cynthia Bond has created a moving and indelible portrait of a fallen woman... Bond traffics in extremely difficult subjects with a grace and bigheartedness that makes for an accomplished, enthralling read.” —Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle“A beautifully wrought ghost story, a love story, a survival story...[A] wonderful debut.” —Angela Flournoy, Los Angeles Review of Books“Reading Cynthia Bond’s Ruby, you can’t help but feel that one day this book will be considered a staple of our literature, a classic. Lush, deep, momentous, much like the people and landscape it describes, Ruby enchants not just with its powerful tale of lifelong quests and unrelenting love, but also with its exquisite language. It is a treasure of a book, one you won’t soon forget.”—Edwidge Danticat, author of Claire of the Sea Light“Pure magic. Every line gleams with vigor and sound and beauty. Ruby somehow manages to contain the darkness of racial conflict and cruelty, the persistence of memory, the physical darkness of the piney woods and strange elemental forces, and weld it together with bright seams of love, loyalty, friendship, laced with the petty comedies of small-town lives. Slow tragedies, sudden light. This stunning debut delivers and delivers and delivers.”—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander “Ruby is a harrowing, hallucinatory novel, a love story and a ghost story about one woman’s attempt to escape the legacy of violence in a small southern town. Cynthia Bond writes with a dazzling poetry that’s part William Faulkner, part Toni Morrison, yet entirely her own. Ruby is encircled by shadows, but incandescent with light.”—Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena“From the first sentence, Cynthia Bond’s unforgettable debut novel, Ruby, took hold of me and it hasn’t let go. Cynthia Bond has written a book everyone should read, about the power of love to overcome even the darkest of histories.”—Amy Greene, author of Bloodroot“Bond proves to be a powerful literary force, a writer whose unflinching yet lyrical prose is reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s.” —O, The Oprah Magazine“In Ruby, Bond has created a heroine worthy of the great female protagonists of Toni Morrison…and Zora Neale Hurston… Bond’s style of writing is as magical as an East Texas sunrise.” —Dallas Morning News“Evocative, affective and accomplished… Bond tells the story of Ruby and Ephram’s lives and their relationship with unflinching honesty and a surreal, haunting quality.” —Texas Observer “Gorgeous… Bond is a gifted writer, powerful and nimble… [I]t’s tempting to call up Toni Morrison or Alice Walker or Ntozake Shange. It should be done more as compliment than comparison, though…Bond’s is a robustly original voice.” —Barnes and Noble Review“If you love well-written historical fiction and multifaceted grown-up characters, put Ruby at the top of your beach bag... Bond delivers multiple goods with this one.” —Essence“Cynthia Bond creates a vibrant chorus of voices united by a common struggle… [T]he prose’s lyricism and Ruby’s interaction with the dead call to mind Beloved… While Bond’s characters may sense the inevitability of loss and loneliness, they are also driven by something else, a timid hopefulness that they may find serenity and compassion amid the ghosts who haunt them.” —The Rumpus“Exquisite, juxtaposing horrific imagery with dreamy evocative lyricism.”—Lambda Literary“Literary magic.” —St. Louis American“Ruby explores the redeeming power of love in the face of horrific trauma… If the truth shall set us free, Ms. Bond shows us, in her story of grace, that love is truth.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“[A] dark and redemptive beauty... Bond’s prose is evocative of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, paying homage to the greats of Southern gothic literature.”—Library Journal (starred)“[A] powerful, explosive novel. Bond immerses readers in a fully realized world, one scarred by virulent racism and perverted rituals but also redeemed by love.”—Booklist (starred)“An unusual, rare and beautiful novel that is meant to be experienced as much as read.” —Shelf Awareness (starred)“A stunning debut. Ruby is unforgettable.” —John Rechy, author of City of Night“Cloaked in authenticity, Ruby is unlike anything else out there right now.”—Windy City Times“Impeccably crafted… Ruby is undoubtedly the early work of a master storyteller whose literary lyricism is nothing short of pitch perfect.” —BookPage“Bracing....Undeniable....The echoes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison are clear....A very strong first novel that blends tough realism with the appealing strangeness of a fever dream.” —Kirkus
From the Author Essay by Cynthia Bond
There are elements of Ruby—locations, characters, stories—that have come from real life. It’s a bit like a pot of gumbo. There are moments, spices, that have been stirred in slowly—from my life and from the stories of others.
Some of my first memories are listening to my mother tell stories about her childhood home, a small, all-black East Texas town. A stunningly beautiful and nationally recognized academician today, my mother grew up on a little farm in the piney woods. She has a collection of tiny scars on her body that illustrate her journey…stepping on a rusty nail and having to wear a slab of salt pork wrapped around her foot for an entire summer. The elbow where a teacup was hurled at her as she bolted out of a door. As children, my sister and I would point to each of these scars, these “chapters” in her young life. In many ways, this is how Ruby began.
As my sister and I grew older, my mother shared more of her story. Of her beloved sister being murdered by the Sheriff and his deputies, of so many other siblings who, because of their skin color and the dehumanization of racism, made the decision to flee up North and pass for white. My mother told us tales of being picked on for being “yellow,” having light skin and straight hair. She told us how, for survival, she learned to fight to protect herself. How she became legendary, beating boys and girls three times her size. Maggie, in my novel, is this part of my mother’s life.
More than anything, my sister and I grew to love our grandfather, Mr. James Marshall, the son of a slave master and a slave, who has become Mr. Bell in the novel. Mr. Marshall who was so light in complexion, whose eyes were so blue and hair so blond, that he was mistaken for white. However, he always corrected the misconception. When stepping onto a bus, and being told by the driver that he did not have to go to the back of the bus my grandfather would turn around and say, “No sir, I’m colored.”
My own history of abuse informed this novel, as well. I joined a support group very early on in my recovery and met an amazing woman who had survived the unthinkable. She had lived through some of the things that I write about in Ruby. Then, in completely disconnected instances, I heard similar stories from women who had never met my friend, sharing the same details, the exact same experiences. Somewhere along the way, working with at risk and homeless youth in Los Angeles for 15 years, living with my own abuse, and hearing stories of such pain and torment, I thought—If you can bear to have lived it, I can at least bear to listen. Ephram Jennings says that in some form to Ruby later in the novel. I asked that of myself while working on this book.
I read books about conjure and ancient spiritual beliefs, about both healing and destructive magic in the Deep South and throughout America in both white and black communities. I have, as a writer, taken the facts I have gathered and woven them together—images, and voices, with the ephemeral thread of fiction. I had already written scenes, snippets of a short story entitled Ruby, and these images were already sifting through my mind, my heart and my fingers. They had taken hold.
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Most helpful customer reviews
92 of 101 people found the following review helpful. Brutality and Abuse Sculpt a Woman's Soul By Fairbanks Reader Cynthia Bond writes beautifully. Her novel is poetic, mystical, and magical. Her writing sang to me. She is definitely a writer to be watched.This story is about Ruby, a mulatto woman who grew up in Liberty, Texas. She was abandoned by her mother and given to a white woman to clean house. She was treated brutally from childhood and her history of abuse colors her future and poisons her life. Ruby has spent most of her life in Liberty except for some years in the 1960's when she went to New York City. There she mingled with the literati and rich people but also sold her body to the highest bidder.Ephram is the man who has loved Ruby since she was a girl. He is a bagger at the Liberty supermarket and has been raised by his sister, Celia. Ephram's father was murdered by lynching, and his mother has been a patient in Rusk Mental Hospital since she attended a picnic stark naked. Both Celia and Ruby compete for Ephram's heart and Ephram hopes he can save Ruby from herself and life.The novel is infused with a lot of voodoo and gris-gris which are metaphorical for much of the pain and despair that the characters feel. However, I feel like there is too much of it as it obscures the story at times.The language in the novel is lovely. "She felt a thousand lavender flowers erupting from the edges of her fingers. She felt them playing a delicious melody that scented the wind and called striped bees and hummingbirds." The magical realism evokes similarities to Alice Hoffman and Isabel Allende.The book goes back and forth in time. The reader sees Ruby's life in the present when she lives in her own filth and is obviously very mentally ill. We also see her in New York during the time that Martin Luther King's march on Washington was held. In New York, she looks from face to face, hoping to find the mother who abandoned her in early childhood.The town of Liberty comes to life with its poverty, racism and brutality towards blacks, especially women. Ms. Bond does a wonderful job evoking a sense of place. Overall, the book is fascinating but I felt a little let down by all the references to voodoo and spiritual events. I certainly hope to read more of Ms. Bond in the future.
285 of 326 people found the following review helpful. I wish I never read this book By Hope I. Help The sheer volume of child-rapes, woman-killings and other truly awful layings-of-waste in this book turned my stomach, but please don't misconstrue that as a testament to the author's powerful prose. Because, while Ruby's "magical" mental state is artfully and intelligently rendered, the heap of corpses that fills her world is just too high. Even for fiction, it defied belief. That Ruby is reduced to rutting in the dirt with any passerby is plausible, as far as narrative structure goes, but do I really want to read about it over and over and over again? I don't mind tough subject matter at all, but felt this story was rendered meaningless by its grotesque accumulation. I considered giving RUBY two stars--because the writing is poetic, the characters well-drawn, and some readers may find the story cathartic--but in the end I just couldn't do it.
51 of 56 people found the following review helpful. Bond expertly weaves an atmospheric and haunting tale, told in rich and poetic language full of talent. By Bookreporter RUBY, a powerful and disturbing debut novel from Cynthia Bond, opens with kindhearted Ephram Jennings asking his sister Celia to bake him a white angel food cake to take to a sick friend. The sick friend turns out to be Ruby Bell, who lives on Bell land, all the way on the other side of town. Now 47, Ephram has known and loved Ruby from childhood. He fondly remembers her as “the sweet little girl with long braids. The kind of pretty it hurt to look at, like candy on a sore tooth.” Ruby is currently in her early 40s, and since her return 11 years earlier to her hometown of Liberty, Ephram has watched her steadily slip into madness. She now walks into town with her “hair caked with mud. Blackened nails as if she had scratched the slate of night. Her acres of legs carrying her, arms swaying like a loose screen. Her eyes the ink of sky, just before the storm.”Long considered the town whore, Ruby is used by the town’s men and shunned by the town’s women. No one other than Miss P, the owner of the P&K Market, shows her any mercy or kindness. She always gives Ruby food to eat, and for 11 years Ephram has watched: “Every day he wanted nothing more than to put each tired sole in his wide wooden tub, brush them both in warm soapy water, cream them with sweet oil, and lanoline and then lip her feet, one by one into a pair of red-heel socks.” Ephram sees Ruby not as the crazy town whore, but as his soul mate, and the day he asks Celia to bake him the cake for her is the day he decides to leave his predictable life behind and help Ruby start to heal from a life filled with horrific mental and physical abuse.The ghosts from Ruby’s past are many, starting with the mother whose abandonment of her as a child leads Ruby to being sold into a life of prostitution, working at a brothel run by Ms. Barbara, a white woman in a neighboring town. Eventually, Ruby flees Texas for New York City, where she hopes to one day find her mother. A telegram from her cousin Maggie brings her back home to Liberty, and slowly the memories of her devastating and violent childhood unravel. Madness overtakes her.As the son of Reverend and Otha Jennings, Ephram has endured his own quiet pain. At the age of eight, his beloved mother is committed to an insane asylum, where she is mistreated and tested like a guinea pig, eventually dying in a fire. Shortly thereafter, his physically abusive father is lynched, leaving Ephram to be raised by his god-fearing and overbearing sister.Ephram and Ruby find happiness together, but it is short-lived. A tangled web of lies and violence connects and corrupts everyone in Liberty, and led by Celia, they conspire to reclaim Ephram’s soul from Ruby. Interspersed throughout the novel are many spiritual elements, including a dybou, an evil spirit that haunts Ruby; the crow, her childhood friend and protector; and the “haints,” the souls of murdered children to whom Ruby lovingly tends.Cynthia Bond expertly weaves an atmospheric and haunting tale, told in rich and poetic language. Here are two particularly lovely sentences: "She felt a thousand lavender flowers erupting from the edges of her fingers. She felt them playing a delicious melody that scented the wind and called striped bees and hummingbirds.” RUBY marks the arrival of a talented new writer.Reviewed by Jennifer Romanello.
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Ruby (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) (Random House Large Print), by Cynthia Bond
Ruby (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) (Random House Large Print), by Cynthia Bond
