1996
Acclaimed author Gloria Naylor has returned to the literary world after a seven-year hiatus with a fictionalized memoir detailing her experiences in 1996 after vacationing in St. Helena Island to focus on her writing. After an altercation with her neighbor and requests for her to keep her cats off her property, Gloria sets out some poison that kills one of the neighbor’s beloved cats. Unfortunately, her neighbor has a brother who works in the National Security Agency, and she reports Gloria as a drug dealer to get back at her. This starts a chain of events and investigations from not only the local police department and Jewish organizations, but also federal agencies.
Gloria starts to notice weird things going on around her and her house, to include lots of traffic on her secluded part of the island. She also realizes she’s being followed and that someone is entering her house and tapping into her computer. It gets to a point where Gloria can’t trust her friends or converse with those online because she’s afraid of who’s watching her. When she can’t take the harassment any longer, she cuts her time on the island short and moves back home to her brownstone in New York. Sadly, things do not end and Gloria must find a way to return to the normalcy of her life.
While reading 1996, the reader is fully aware that this book is a memoir of sorts as it’s written in first person, giving Naylor’s actual experiences through this ordeal, in which she’s the main character. However, it’s also fictionalized in that she obviously doesn’t really know what’s going on next door, across the street or at the NSA for example. It is an intriguing story, reminiscent of conspiracy theory type movies popular in the last few decades. While I can say the story definitely makes you say hmmmmm, some parts of it will make the average reader question the validity of Naylor’s allegations while others will merely view it as entertainment only.
It is the third-person accounts that I couldn’t really follow, coupled with parts of the story which could’ve been tightened, edited a bit more, and the abrupt ending should’ve been a bit more conclusive. The characters, with the exception of Naylor, weren’t developed as well as I would’ve liked, but overall, I did enjoy the story. While there are many speculations on what the federal government has the capability to do, and cases and documentation against them, it’s a bit unfortunate that these types of allegations are lumped with UFO sightings and alien abductions.
Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers
You might also like
|
|
|
|
|
Closing The Gap
Bridging The Gap
This Present Darkness
Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace
Loading ...
Comments