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Them: A Novel, by Nathan McCall
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The author of the bestselling memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler presents a profound debut novel -- in the tradition of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Zadie Smith's White Teeth -- that captures the dynamics of class and race in today's urban integrated communities.
Nathan McCall's novel, Them, tells a compelling story set in a downtown Atlanta neighborhood known for its main street, Auburn Avenue, which once was regarded as the "richest Negro street in the world."
The story centers around Barlowe Reed, a single, forty-something African American who rents a ramshackle house on Randolph Street, just a stone's throw from the historic birth home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Barlowe, who works as a printer, otherwise passes the time reading and hanging out with other men at the corner store. He shares his home and loner existence with a streetwise, twentysomething nephew who is struggling to get his troubled life back on track.
When Sean and Sandy Gilmore, a young white couple, move in next door, Barlowe and Sandy develop a reluctant, complex friendship as they hold probing -- often frustrating -- conversations over the backyard fence.
Members of both households, and their neighbors as well, try to go about their business, tending to their homes and jobs. However, fear and suspicion build -- and clashes ensue -- with each passing day, as more and more new whites move in and make changes and once familiar people and places disappear.
Using a blend of superbly developed characters in a story that captures the essence of this country's struggles with the unsettling realities of gentrification, McCall has produced a truly great American novel.
- Sales Rank: #244083 in Books
- Brand: Washington Square Press
- Published on: 2008-08-19
- Released on: 2008-08-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.00" w x 5.31" l, .74 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
- Great product!
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The embattled characters who people McCall's trenchant, slyly humorous debut novel (following the 1994 memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler and a 1997 essay collection) can't escape gentrification, whether as victim or perpetrator. As he turns 40, Barlowe Reed, who is black, moves to buy the home he's long rented in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. His timing is bad: whites have taken note of the cheap, rehab-ready houses in the historically black neighborhood and, as Barlowe's elderly neighbor says to him, They comin. Skyrocketing housing prices and the new neighbors' presumptuousness anger Barlowe, whose 20-something nephew is staying with him, and other longtime residents, who feel invaded and threatened. Battle lines are drawn, but when a white couple moves in next door to Barlowe, the results are surprising. Masterfully orchestrated and deeply disturbing illustrations of the depth of the racial divide play out behind the scrim of Barlowe's awkward attempts to have conversations in public with new white neighbor Sandy. McCall also beautifully weaves in the decades-long local struggle over King's legacy, including the moment when a candidate for King's church's open pulpit is rejected for linguistic lapses... unbefitting of the crisp doctoral eloquence of Martin Luther King. McCall nails such details again and again, and the results, if less than hopeful, are poignant and grimly funny. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Former Washington Post reporter Nathan McCall’s previous work includes a memoir and a collection of essays. Like the characters in this debut novel, reviewers agreed that the ground covered in Them is valuable, but they disagreed over how it should be treated. While all critics thought that Barlowe is a complex protagonist and a fascinating black voice, many thought that McCall’s white characters are little more than stereotypes. Some reviewers interpreted these characters’ lack of depth as satire; others saw it as a realistic portrayal of how some people behave in a racially charged environment. The novel’s subject matter, gentrification, is a problem that few in America, white or black, have really figured out how to solve. As a result, most critics were willing to forgive the work’s shortcomings in the hope that its readers will learn to forgive as well.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
Forty-year-old Barlowe Reed is a hardworking printer, renting a house in the Old Fourth Ward of Atlanta. His nephew Tyrone is his only steady companion, now that his erstwhile girlfriend has dumped him. He feels adrift, chafing at the limited opportunities for a black man with less than a high-school education and aggravated by Them—bureaucrats, bosses, ex-girlfriends, but mostly white folks. Wondering about his next step in life—whether he should buy the house he lives in or switch to a higher-paying job—Barlowe discovers that his new next-door neighbors are white. The couple, Sean and Sandy, have joined the ranks of yuppies gentrifying the area. Sandy makes tentative approaches to Barlowe as her husband steams under every negative incident. The neighbors are a microcosm of what is happening throughout the community, as whites assert their desire to change the area and blacks assert their desire for things to remain unchanged. McCall, author of Makes Me Wanna Holler (1994), offers a sensitive look at the dynamics of gentrification. Bush, Vanessa
Most helpful customer reviews
35 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
Awesome book for a discussion...
By Jason Frost
I read Mr. McCall's 'Makes me Wanna Holler' when I was a younger and still not yet a man. I read it and throughout the book I was saying "yeah", "that's right", and "exactly". It was very good for me to read something from someone who knew EXACTLY how I felt. When I saw he had a fictional book coming out I knew I had to read it.
This book is an awesome novel about "them". The question is who is "them"? Are you a "them"? Is your neighboor a "them"? Is your boss a "them"? Well, it all depends on who YOU are. Unlike other books on race relations this one gives us a view from both sides while slightly favoring one side. Entertaining, a little political, at times gritty, eye-opening, very well written, and a great book to read for your book club, to/with your kids, and discuss with co-workers.
Hopefully this won't be this authors last work of fiction.
27 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
There Goes the Neighborhood
By M. P. McKinney
Nathan McCall's novel, Them, depicts the gentrification of Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. Barlowe Reed, a single, middle-aged loner, and his nephew Tyrone, have been residents of the Old Fourth Ward for several years. Barlowe is wary of Caesar in all forms: government, bureaucracy, law enforcement, even flags. His feelings of distrust are deepened with the influx of new, white residents into their neighborhood which is rich with the history of the Civil Rights Movement and the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The racial tension in the neighborhood escalates, pitting black residents against white residents.
One white couple, Sean and Sandy Gilmore, buy the house right next door to Barlowe. Sandy and Barlowe hesitantly begin chatting over the backyard fence attempting to find understanding and common ground amidst the growing confusion and resentment building in the neighborhood.
McCall pulls no punches in Them as he excavates the multiple layers of struggle, history, pride, and hope that the neighborhood holds for its' residents. Them poses many questions about the gentrification process, yet offers little in the way of concrete answers. McCall's use of dialect, well-developed characters and detailed setting encourages readers to become invested in the residents of the Old Fourth Ward. Them is an excellent choice for individuals looking for a thought-provoking read and a great catalyst for book club discussions.
Reviewed by M. P. McKinney
APOOO BookClub
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
The perspective of the gentrified
By Richard A. Jenkins
McCall's book interested me because I used to live in another gentrified Atlanta neighborhood, Kirkwood and unlike previous accounts of gentrification, the emphasis was on the gentrified. I'd also read and liked McCall's "Makes Me Wanna Holler". When I first looked at houses, my broker had suggested looking at the Old Fourth Ward, which then was just beginning to see redevelopment. The area didn't appeal to me because it lacked "amenities"--the rapid transit was inconvenient to most of the neighborhood and the shopping didn't amount to much beyond neighborhood mini-marts, plus it would have meant an even more inconvenient commute than the one I already had. Basically, like much of intown Atlanta, it was carbound and not very "urban" even though the "urban" location was supposed to be the appeal. Over the next 7 years, I frequently drove through the Old Fourth Ward on my way to other places and watched its rapid evolution.
McCall is at his best when he takes the perspective of Barlowe, a middle aged African-American man who finds himself with two not-always-well-meaning White gentrifiers next door. The changes in the neighborhood are reflected in Barlowe. He considers home ownership, deals with the puzzling motives and behavior of his neighbors and grapples with change. The couple next door are less well drawn. The wife is characterized as a former campus activist who works for a social service agency in Atlanta, yet has no experience with people like her neighbors. One would have expected her to seek out neighbors like her Black middle class colleagues or to show the naive, sometimes condescending attitude of many junior people in the helping professions. Instead, she comes across as good natured but unable to draw on her activist or occupational background. The motives and personality of her husband are put together even less well. The two of them are somehow short of money, but able to afford contractors to do expensive renovations.
Some events in the book draw from real life. For example, the rather unfocused effort by a clergyman to organize against gentrification seems to be based on an effort that had taken place in Kirkwood before I moved there. That effort failed mostly because the clergyman was an outsider and had made no effort to engage local people. In the book, it's less clear why things failed. Atlanta is a place with little history of collective action (beyond isolated examples such as lynchings and the rally against the Klan mentioned in the book), so this is not surprising. Unfortunately, it would be more understandable if McCall provided more context. He does mention the social changes in the city, the lack of middle class African-American interest in inner city communities, but doesn't really hit on the essentially neo-feudal social structure of the city and the surprising lack of real civil rights (or other activist) history, even though Dr. King and his lieutenants used Atlanta as their base. While McCall highlights the role of White realtors' solicitations in the Old Fourth Ward, it's likely that many more early houses came on the market because of a law that allowed people to take title to houses if the taxes have been delinquent for a particular period of time. The middle men who took advantage of this and turned houses over to realtors in my area were mostly African-American. Atlanta has plenty of sleazy would-be Donald Trumps, but unlike the realtor in the book they don't drive Cadillacs and they don't make house calls.
In general, the motives and personalities of the gentrifiers tend to be rather sketchy and the range of people who gentrify is not well reflected. Most people who'd gone into neighborhoods like the Old Fourth Ward had been priced out of already gentrified areas like Midtown and Virginia Highland, but had had little incentive or desire to commute from newer, far out suburbs. People like me wanted some semblence of city living, how ever meager. Many early gentrifiers were artists, gay, or otherwise outside the mainstream. Many of the people I encountered were as cringe-worthy as those in the book; people who frankly had no understanding of their surroundings or how to build a functional urban environment. In Kirkwood, there was much interest in attracting the kind of overpriced, mediocre restaurants that typify Atlanta's walking neighborhoods and less concern with attracting a bank or a pharmacy (businesses that everyone in the area needed and could use) or with improving mass transit. OTOH, many people approached their new neighborhoods with much more sensitivity and engaged neighbors in a more hospitable way. Even Barlowe's motivations seem murky at times. It's not always clear how he's reading his new neighbors and when he votes against local rabble rousing, the reasoning isn't entirely convincing.
Despite the drawbacks, McCall picks up on the knowing details of living in a gentrified neighborhood: the disappearance of useful businesses, the sudden appearance of joggers and bikers, and the willingness of children to engage new neighbors in a way that adults often don't. He misses, though, the ways in which people slowly establish a place in the community--for me, it was the waves hello when I sat on my front porch or the editorial commentaries I received when I painted my porch or fence.
The book ends on a tragic note for Barlowe's neighbors and, to some extent, for Barlowe, himself. I found it a bit overwrought, especially in relation to the experience of most people I'd known in areas like the Old Fourth Ward. Shortly before I left Kirkwood and Atlanta, I spoke to a new neighbor who had over-reacted to the kind of vandalism one would easily encounter with a new house in the suburbs. They seemed more annoyed than re-assured that little "bad" had happened to people during my time in the area and that my experience with neighbors had been positive. I was tempted to tell them that the shoddy construction of their infill mini-mansion was a going to cause more grief than anything else. Isolated petty crime and encounters like mine with these neighbors are more typical than the melodrama that ends this book.
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