Reviews with content warning for Police brutality - If Beale Street Could Talk

Tish and Fonny are young and in love. They're planning to get married and have just found a place to live together. They're excited to move in, and even more so when Tish finds out she's pregnant. But Fonny is falsely accused of a horrific crime and arrested. As both their families set out to clear his name, the narrative follows the wide range of emotions experienced by all - Tish and Fonny, their parents/families, and friends - in the face of a now uncertain (at best) future.

This was very much a scene/ambience and character focused novel. The plot, as it were, is basically what I wrote in the blurb...and very little more. The magic of this novel came from the picture of the characters within this setting and situation that Bladwin painted. The writing, and the narrative was told primarily from Tish's perspective and in her voice, has a unique flow that is a mix of stream of consciousness, colloquial conversation, and some philosophical reflection. It's like a meandering sort of storytelling (we all know that person who goes on many side quests and tangents when telling a story), but one that is quite insightful both to Tish's internal self and the external circumstances of her and Fonny's lives. I was quite specifically compelled by the ruminations on what it means to be a man and a woman in the world, and specifically a Black man and woman in this world, in what is truth versus what is believed/accepted as truth. Anyways, it's a very poetic sort of jumping around.

The interpersonal dynamics also really shine. The nuances of these family relations, both within the family and with each other, are so intricate and authentic. These characters just felt so real - like they were my neighbors and I was hearing about their real life situations, not reading a piece of fiction. Which, really, says two things to me. One, that Baldwin is a very impressive writer. And two, that this situation could be (has often been) real - which likely informed both Bladwin's telling of it and my buy-in to its possibility IRL - and that is, as always, quite upsetting. It makes the heartbreak hit that much harder.

Speaking of, oh my goodness this gets right to the breaking human hearts of the broken “justice” and incarceration system that we have in the US (that has changed very little since the publication of this novel in 50 years since this was published). The fear and grief and sorrow and loneliness, for truly all our characters in different ways (the complexities of which Baldwin does a great job portraying), hurts so much. It’s heartbreaking, to want and hope for a happier ending for Fonny and Tish and to pretty much know they won’t get it. And then, when the novel closes, and you don’t know for sure if the ending is real or a dream (and maybe what’s the difference really?) there's a moorless, hopeful, sadness that I almost cannot describe. Damn.

I mean, there's not much more I can add to the lore of Baldwin's body of work, but I will at least lend my voice to the chorus of praise. The way he intertwines love and passion with grief and frustration in the face of injustice/powerlessness is phenomenal.

“Being in trouble can have a funny effect on the mind. I don't know if I can explain this. you go through some days and you seem to be hearing people and you seem to be talking to them and you seem to be doing your work, or, at least, your work gets done; but you haven't seen or heard a soul and if someone asked you what you have done that day you'd have to think awhile before you could answer. But, at the same time, and even on the self-same day - and this is what is hard to explain - you see people like you never saw them before. They shine as bright as a razor. Maybe it's because you see people differently than you saw them before your trouble started. Maybe you wonder about them more, but in a different way, and this makes them very strange to you. Maybe you get scared and numb, because you don't know if you can depend on people for anything, anymore.”

“I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they're making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.”

“It’s funny what you hold on to to get through terror when terror surrounds you.”

“Though the death took many forms, though people died early in many different ways, the death itself was very simple and the cause was simple, too: as simple as a plague: the kids had been told that they weren't worth shit and everything they saw around them proved it. They struggled, they struggled, but they fell, like flies, and they congregated on the garbage heaps of their lives, like flies.”

“It doesn’t do to look too hard into this mystery, which is as far from being simple as it is from being safe. We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.”

“They were so free that they believed in nothing; and didn't realize that this illusion was their only truth and that they were doing exactly as they had been told.”

“Time could not be bought. The only coin time accepted was life.”

“Neither love nor terror makes one blind, indifference makes one blind.”

“Each of these men would gladly go to jail, blow away a pig, or blow up a city, to save their progeny from the jaws of this democratic hell.” (damn, and who wouldn’t, and why should they have to/why are they even forced into this position in the first place)

“Despair can make one monstrous, but it can also make one noble.”

“The mind is like an object that picks up dust. The object desn't know, any more than the mind does, why what clings to it clings. But once whatever it is lights on you, it doesn’t go away…”

“He’s beautiful. They beat him up, but they didn't beat him - if you see what I mean. He's beautiful.”

Content Warnings

xereads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

A classic that I think everyone should read because of course so many themes (race, poverty, injustice, classism, grief, and family) and the characters’ experiences are relevant to this day. After finishing the book the reader is left to decipher Fonny’s fate…I will say I wish we knew for sure what happened but through the course of the book this happens a few times. This book while fiction, to some could also be considered romance as we understand Tish and Fonny’s timeline and the love that develops. But to me the romance shows in how Tish’s parents and sister show their love, through action for her and Fonny.

Content Warnings

lanamae's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

amalas_bookstop's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Ughhh! Books like this make me so frustrated in their realness. Even though I knew exactly where this was headed I could not help myself to feel hopeful and expect something different.

Content Warnings

bookish_skies's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Content Warnings

fictionalfrank's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

tlaynejones's review against another edition

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fast-paced

4.0

This is my first of Baldwin’s books, and it is easy to see why his work stand as modern classics. For the most part I thought this was a compelling and engaging novel. The sense of time, the love between Fonny and Tish, the examination of racist and unjust ’justice’ system were all very well done. I was however really dissatisfied and frustrated with the layers of sexism and misogyny that permeate every aspect of the writing. It will forever challenge me to understand how the ‘great thinkers’ who have worked so hard to shine a light of the reality of prejudice, power dynamics, systemic injustice, and biased social assumptions - in relationship to race - can be so blind to how all of these impact and influence gender as well. I’m glad to have read this, so I have the cultural knowledge, but it leaves me wanting to go back and reread An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, to reexperience and to compare a novel that examines some of the same social injustices, but from the perspective of a contemporary woman.
Very cautiously recommended, check CW

Content Warnings

mauricekofi's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is my first Baldwin book, and now I understand why he's one of the greatest authors of time. The sorrow I feel from the story he creates is sobering, a reminder that the romance of people of color differs so far from what white people may imagine. His call out to Romeo and Juliet represents how this a tragedy like none other, not one of faults of the characters themselves, but from the evil and darkness that is America, the way it murders and cannibalizes it's citizens so it can call itself "great"

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