So I think 'surely, there must be something better than this to read in there!' and beg her to lent me that book in the same tone I would beg an axe-carrying mass-murderer to spare my life.The first think that caught my attention - I was looking for full-length texts, not those useless chopped up texts the Nortons are full of - was Nella Larsen's 'Quicksand'. Fortunately I notice that the girl sitting next to me has a copy of of one of those huge Norton Anthologies - possibly to use in another class. ('Yes, you seeee children, Orin feels verrry verrry geeltee beecoz hee thinks hee eez reesponseebell for.') Ten minutes into the class, I'm ready to die my hair black, cut my veins and re-read Bell Jar. Sometime during the past week I happened to be sitting in a very stuffy classroom - first heatwave of the summer lurking outside the air-conditioned building - listening to a very boring lecture on Eugene O'Neil's 'Mourning Becomes Electra'. George Eliot or Toni Morrison or Margaret Atwood or Chimamanda Adiche could have burrowed into any one of those great situations and illuminated, rather than merely cataloging, the racial struggle of the Harlem Renaissance.Not a terrible book, and a quick read (which can be its own merit).

I can imagine how powerful any of the scenes in this slight volume could have been in the hands of a more gifted craftsman. So she heads home for America, where she married a preacher for no good reason, pops out a few kids and is thoroughly disgusted by her life.I can grapple with the feeling of isolation that the protagonist's identity causes her, but the stark cause and effect of Larsen's writing leaves me cold.

She is very well received there, but she feels her African American heritage makes her more of a curiosity than a part of society. After a year or so she pulls up her roots again to visit her mother's family in the Netherlands.

She is rebuffed by her white relatives, then settles into a nice life in Harlem.

She sets off to call on what little family she has. Quicksand by Nella Larsen made me think of better versions of the genre: Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Fredric, or Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy, The Drowning Room by Michael Pye, even Jane Eyre (though I'm not fond of Jane Eyre).The young, bi-racial orphan wakes up one morning entirely unhappy with her life- she's a teacher, but she doesn't love it.

Quicksand larsen novel