'My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist', Tayari Jones begins as she means to go on by immediately dropping us in to the heart of the action with real urgency.
Silver Sparrow is the new and much anticipated novel from Tayari Jones who achieved massive success and critical acclaim with her novel American Marriage (2019). Coming off the back of such a landmark novel was never going to be easy but in Silver Sparrow we are back in the type of domestic drama that Tayari Jones articulates so effortlessly.
For her epigraph, Jones choses a poem by Natasha Tretheway A Daughter is a Colony to set us up for a journey about what it is to be somebody's daughter and, furthermore, to be somebody's secret daughter.
Like American Marriage, the narrative in Silver Sparrow is told through multiple voices but interesting in this new work is the way two half-sisters, Dana and Chaurisse, tell their own stories. In alternating chapters they tell the historic backstory of how their parents got together as if through their very own experience.
In concurrent stories of family secrets and deception the girls' own perspective on how they came to be in the world mythologises their father and highlights the heroism and self-curation that exists in the way we tell our own stories. Jones understands the way histories are shared and uses this technique to shine a light on the complicty that exists in bigamous relationships.
The novel is most successful in exploring the theme of bigamy from the perspective of the women most closely involved, in this case the second wife and 'secret' daughter. The parts in Dana's mother's salon, The Pink Fox, are particuarly immersive into the authentic world Jones creates.
Convincing messy family drama told with real class. 4 star
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones published by Oneworld Publications 368 pages
Thank you to One World for the advanced review copy and for supplying the below extract from an interview with Tayari Jones.
What was your inspiration for Silver Sparrow?
I have always been intrigued by the idea of “half ” sisters. I have
two sisters with whom I share a father, but we each have different mothers. They
were born before my
father met my
mother,
and
they grew
up in
another state and led completely
separate lives from
me and from
each other.
When I was a little girl,
with only
brothers, I used to
fantasize about having
two
big sisters far away
who would
love
me, dress me
up,
listen
to me
talk, et
cetera.
The link between my own personal obsession and this fictional
story was inspired quite accidentally. While
enjoying a night
out with a bunch of friends, we were discussing one of the many cases you hear
about—a man dies
and
the
other
grieving
widow
shows
up
with her stair-step kids. One of my girlfriends looked up from her margarita and said, “You know, he had to have some help from the inside. You cannot get local bigamy off the ground unless one
of the women is
willing
to work
with you.” It
was
all
I could
do to
keep from running out
of the bar to
get home and start
writ-
ing. The first line, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,”
jumped
into my
head, as
clearly as
though
someone had
spoken into
my ear.
