The first sentence in this book is just a little list of the fun and pretty things that a little girl likes, and the first thing on the list is candy buttons. Then before you know it, you’re immersed in the grind of hand-to-mouth existence, the dreariness of urban living without respite, and the yearning for experiences that are not in the world’s plans for this little girl. That’s how the whole book goes – it reads so easily and feels so light, but feelings and understandings sneak up on you the whole time. Somehow, Brooks squeezes moment after moment of real human intensity into less than 200 pages without making the story dense or heavy. She conveys the complex and subtle truth of one person, Maud Martha Brown, from childhood to motherhood. Maud Martha grapples with issues of race, between white and Black people as well as within the Black community, with gender relations, family systems, and class issues, but you never feel that you’re reading a treatise, or that the character is a device for conveying the author’s ideas. Instead, you feel that you’re right there with Maud Martha, watching all these things and more as her life moves among them. Brooks is sharp, in all senses of that word; Maud Martha is almost as perceptive as her author but much more forgiving. The result is an honest but gentle book about Chicago and its innumerable convoluted foibles, but also about one single straightforward person.

I love the simplicity of the story- you can really feel the rhythm of life, every day life, coming through the pages.

This book has a beautiful prose style, but I wish I didn’t have a copy with the notes of a freshman in it..