Black Bloods by Denis Gray: A Review by Kirpal Gordon



For one thing, the strengths in a Denis Gray novel---engaging eye for home-spun detail, authentic historical settings, authoritative you-are-there reportage, intriguing one-two punch of dialogue and explication, a wide range of African-American characters---are even stronger in his latest outing, Black Bloods. Like that evocative cover art by Charles Lilly, Gray's got the Nineteen Twenties in Manhattan roaring wild in high life and low with complex characters holding secrets that will undo the best of their schemes. Two more things happen and I offer these as words of praise and warning: At page one, prepare to read it to the end; his plot turns are diabolical, and the result is a book I could not afford to put down---the last 25 pages are the fastest.

For all of its narrative brilliance, however, the story is not merely about a confidence game; the story itself is a confidence game, inseperable from our own American history. The result is an experience that awakens a moral urgency and collapses opposites like Wall Street and Strivers' Row, love and hate, white and black, top and bottom, pass and fail. Gray offers us a marvellous insight into how twisted race is in our heritage, but in his parable style he reveals a way to see it, as Joni Mitchell put it, "from both sides now."

Denis Gray's A LONG STRETCH OF BLUE: A Review

 

 

by Kirpal Gordon

 



 

Once again, author Denis Gray has surpassed himself! His body of work does for the novel what August Wilson sought to do with theater: deliver another side of the African-American experience as it has played out over the decades of the XXth century and beyond. Although Gray's background as an opera singer is never mentioned, it's clear that he understands the healing power of song and brings to the blues a deep appreciatioin of the form. He even writes in a blues-inflected, repeating line that underlines the wit and signifyin' style of the great bluesmen. Moreover, in this historical moment when white America is catching up to the real history of our nation, A LONG STRETCH OF BLUE reveals the real struggle of every day folks caught up in this unjust beast of racial bias. Gray turns over every plot twist to make his delivery more total and souful. In short, a stunner! Have mercy!

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