...[a] stunning new novel ... Sexton’s writing is clear and uncluttered, the dialogue authentic, with all the cadences of real speech. There is no false teenager slang, no tortured Southern accents or crude approximations of the words of the enslaved. Song lyrics, prayers, chants and Scripture are used liberally to situate the characters in time, but also to bind them to one another through a shared culture. But her prose also contains intimate, particularized glimpses of the main characters’ lives ... the plot itself is not quite the point of The Revisioners.This is a novel about the women, the mothers. The mothers who slough off the rough edges of the terrible tales, who leave the essence of the story without the pathology ... The novel proves that even if she is not with you, your mother (and her mother too) is not only part of you, but is you. You hear her voice echo through your own. You feel her expression creep onto your own face. She has something to pass onto you. The Revisioners also reminds us that though you may share blood, there are also connections deeper and more powerful than blood, connections that turn a collection of individuals into a community, and will forever be more significant than any bond that’s merely skin deep.
... a passionate exploration of liberty, heritage, sisterhood and motherhood in New Orleans ... Sexton’s characters’ realistic interior thoughts drive the novel, revealing hidden emotions of apprehension and nostalgia ... an uplifting novel of black women and their tenacity.
...a powerful, deeply personal second novel ... It’s rare for dual narratives to be equally compelling, and Sexton achieves this while illustrating the impact of slavery long after its formal end. Nurturing, motherhood, and pregnancy rise up as important themes. Readers will engage fully in this compelling story of African American women who have power in a culture that attempts to dismantle it.
... deftly structured ... In this uplifting, graceful novel, the recovery of one’s ancestral past is an act of empowerment — one that heals grief, clears one’s heart of hatred, and replenishes one’s hope in the future.
Sexton explores these unspoken tensions brilliantly. Her subtle portrayal of a black mother’s competing desires is layered with both pathos and wit ... that structure is complex, particularly for such a relatively compact novel, but Sexton writes with such a clear sense of place and time that each of these intermingled stories feels essential and dramatic in its own way ... That life-or-death drama on the plantation provides the novel’s most terrifying moments, which could easily have rendered the other sections slight by comparison. Instead, Sexton echoes and complicates Josephine’s experience in each of the later two story lines in ways that feel both historically accurate and socially illuminating ... a novel marked by acts of cruelty but not, ultimately, overwhelmed by them. The line stretching from Ava back to Josephine and beyond connects a collection of women attuned to danger, quick to adapt, remarkably hopeful about the future.
Sexton weaves well-crafted intergenerational narratives, each set in a different era and each giving voice to strong women of color ... The dynamics of a brutal past encompassing violence and racial inequality is core here, but the narrative is significant for acknowledging that elements of that past are not completely past and for portraying two fearless women separated by time but both dealing with white women’s racism. Recommended for all collections.
Sexton...returns with this excellent story of a New Orleans family’s ascent from slavery to freedom, paying poetic tribute to their fearlessnes ... A chilling plot twist reveals the insidious racial divide that stretches through the generations, but it’s the larger message that’s so timely ... This novel is both powerful and full of hope.
This second novel from Sexton confirms the storytelling gifts she displayed in her lushly readable debut ... In this wondrous telling, King can lie on the sofa playing Fortnite in the same short book where Josephine’s fleeing family is hobbling 'the other horses whose shoes need to be damaged so no one could follow us straight away.' At the intriguing crossroads of the seen and the unseen lies a weave among five generations of women.
