Anna In-Between

Starred review from July 13, 2009
Nunez deftly explores family strife and immigrant identity in her vivid latest. When Anna Sinclair, a New York City book editor, takes a vacation to her parents' home in the Caribbean, she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has advanced breast cancer. Beatrice rejects all suggestions that she be treated in the U.S.—she believes that, as a black woman, she'll receive second-rate care—leaving Anna and her father, John, to tread lightly between respecting Beatrice's wishes and steering her toward what is best for her. As a prominent black family on a largely white island, the Sinclairs are used to straddling two worlds, and Anna's mother's fears cause Anna to examine her thoughts about race. “Fiction best achieves the universal through the specific. It is by telling stories that are plausible, about characters who are believable, that the writer eases us in to exploring the many facets of the human condition,” Anna thinks at one point. Nunez meets these guidelines and more with expressive prose and convincing characters that immediately hook the reader.

Starred review from August 15, 2009
Anna Sinclair is a senior editor for an imprint at a prominent New York publishing company. Although she had left the Caribbean island where she grew up to attend college and then settle in the United States, she routinely returns to visit her parents. During one lengthy stay her mother, Beatrice, reveals that she has a large tumor in her breast. While Beatrice begins treatments for cancer, Anna and her father attempt to persuade her to have surgery in the United States, but she flatly refuses. During her weeks at her parents' home, Anna finds herself increasingly conflicted by both her parents' culture and her adopted one. She does not identify with her parents' upper-class status on the island, but she does not feel American either. Further, she is mystified by her parents' complete dedication to each other while her own marriage ended in divorce. VERDICT Nunez, an award-winning author of seven novels (e.g., "Prospero's Daughter"), has created a moving and insightful character study while delving into the complexities of identity politics. Highly recommended for fiction collections.Cristella Bond, Anderson P.L., IN

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2009
Traveling back to her Caribbean island home on vacation from her high-pressure job as a book editor in Manhattan, Anna Sinclair is predisposed to be at odds with the vast dichotomy between her two worlds. Not only does the languid pace of tropical life take some adjustment but Anna is perennially frustrated by the fractious relationship with her mother, taking quick umbrage at the hypercritical womans subtle faultfinding. So it goes until the day when her normally proper and reserved mother swallows her pride and reveals the hideous lump that has deformed her breast. Shocked by her mothers life-threatening condition, appalled by her fathers seeming indifference to his wifes deteriorating health, Anna struggles to convince her parents to return with her to New York, where her mother can receive proper care. Mostly eschewing her traditional, sweeping themes of race and class structure within the colonialism of island culture, Nunez (Prosperos Daughter, 2006) offers a more intimate portrait of the unknowable secrets and indelible ties that bind husbands and wives, mothers and daughters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)