Reviews for Them

The average rating for Them based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-06-04 00:00:00 Maria Diz Halfway through this book, I would have given it 2 stars. Most of the characters are mere stereotypes and I felt that the interactions between the African American residents and the incoming white gentrifiers were way over the top. I am very familiar with the area about which McCall is writing - it's only a few miles from my home and I pass through it several times a week. Very little in McCall's description rang true to me. A pet peeve of mine as an African American is the unnecessary and inaccurate use of dialect, and McCall's usage was very poor. (We Atlantans really can pronounce "Martin Luther King" without any difficulty.) Two points brought the book up to the 3 star level for me. The "circling of the wagons" of the white residents was, unfortunately, very accurate. The neighborhood parties to which only whites were invited, the coded conversations about safety and improving the neighborhood, the importance of reaching a critical mass of whites within a neighborhood - these were depicted accurately and well. In addition, I developed a fondness for the protagonist who turned out to be a far more complex and likable character than he appeared to be at the beginning. This is McCall's first novel; I hope that he builds on his strengths and eliminates his weaknesses in the next one.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-05-05 00:00:00 Sean Ruark So I'm almost but not quite done with this, but I can't see it getting any better so: I picked it up cause I saw it on some top books of the year list and was interested in the topic. It's a novel about the gentrification of an old black neighborhood in Atlanta, telling a story from both the black and white sides. Being a white girl from a privileged background living in a neighborhood that worries my coworkers, I thought maybe this could, I don't know, better educate me about the issues and why I keep feeling vaguely guilty or being told I should feel vaguely guilty about gentrification. I was really surprised to find that McCall, who clearly wrote the book to take on Big Racial Issues, doesn't seem to have a good grasp of either side of this business, or at least portrays all his characters as completely unbelievable cartoons. Because what we need more of in this country is clearly more cariactures yelling. The dude's a black professor at Emory who used to work at the Washington Post and has had a really lucrative speaking career after a couple of books also about racial issues. What it really feels like is that he's been well-off for way too long to write believable poor inner-city black characters anymore and then based all the white gentrifiers off the douchiest, most clueless freshmen in Emory's journalism program, which is annoying in multiple ways. Or maybe he just isn't a very good writer of fiction, I don't know. What I do know is that Them doesn't have a single character who doesn't feel like the literary equivalent of clip art. EDIT: I am now finished, and it did not get better. Also, the ending was stupid.