Push Book

5 stars for creating a really unique heroine
5 stars for an enjoyable, engrossing story
7 stars for beautiful use of language (yeah mutherfuckers, sometimes that word is the only word that fits)

I didn't put much faith in an author named 'Sapphire'. More urban fiction: ghetto girl's acrylics scratch eyes out of baby father's new crack-addicted girlfriend, I thought. (Not that I don't quite enjoy urban fiction, Zane is quite good and very spicy). I couldn't have been more wrong. The writing in the book is a joy to read. It isn't, as most good writing is, just a vehicle to convey the material as much as a vibrant and necessary component of the story. The literary device of the writing changing, opening, blooming along with the story is remarkably well-executed.

The story is really of how the system has failed those at the very bottom of society. How no one cares about those who fall through the cracks so long as they do it quietly. It's very much a diatribe against an America that so many blacks feel they had no place in forming and no place within as a right. The racism and other prejudices are that of poverty. Lack of experience and gossip being the main vehicles for knowledge rather than books and education. In other words, the racism is not at all deep-seated, it's something that can easily be changed for the better.

It is a wonderful book on every level, not just the writing, or the story, or the tremendous creation of Precious - antithesis of a heroine, a 250lb girl who describes herself as too dark and ugly, and whose taste in clothes is appalling (but hopeful, fluorescent yellow leggings and a leather jacket) but also the ending. There isn't one, it's in your mind. And perhaps in how you might see your home town after reading it, and maybe also in who you vote for on your local council. It's really you that can make the ending.