Review: White Tears

Title White Tears
By Hari Kunzru
Genre Adult Literary Fiction
Format Print
Rating ⭐️

Synopsis
The only thing Seth and Carter have in common is their love of music. Particularly old blues recordings. When Seth accidentally records a song at the park Carter edits and posts it on the internet claiming it's a song by a blues artist known as Charlie Shaw. The whole thing is made up but then they learn that maybe Charlie Shaw really existed and the past begins to haunt their lives in ways they never expected.

First Sentence
That summer I would ride my bike over the bridge, lock it up in front of the bars on Orchard Street and drift through the city on foot, recording.

Another Tournament of Books read. Oi! Some of these are hard to read but usually, if I stick with them, they pay off. Not so much with this one.

While it took a bit to get into it, I found myself easily making my way through this one. It was, for the most part, easy to read. About half way through it, however, it got really, really weird. It started to feel like some strange hallucinatory fever dream and I found myself wondering what the hell was going on! I stuck with it hoping my efforts would be rewarded but, alas, they were not.

At it's heart this is a book about racism and, quite frankly, I'm tired of all the talk about racism. If all we do is talk, talk, talk about it nothing gets better and we just keep feeding the machine. Books like this aren't helping. They too are just fueling the machine.

Personal feelings aside, this book just didn't work. It starts out telling a story and then gets so convoluted and far fetched with in your face agenda pushing that it just didn't work. I felt like I'd been taken in with the promise of a story and handed, instead, a pamphlet on why I should feel like crap for being born white. It's the old bait and switch. I should have just set it aside.

Should you read it
No. There are much more beautiful books out there that handle this subject with no agenda and a more hopeful message of love.