Another Country by James Baldwin Review

Title: Another Country
Author: James Baldwin

Genre: Fiction

Blurb: Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the early 1970s.

Me: Continuing my Baldwin kick with one of his later novels, Another Country. He just not only never fails to disappoint, but always manages to amaze me and pull out something new. And the way he writes about love is unparalleled. 

The Ups: I say this with almost every Baldwin book, but the characters are just exquisite. The beginning of Another Country was actually a slower burn than his other novels in terms of getting to know the characters; I felt it took a little longer to see their true characters. But it pays off- I think the sheer amount of time we get with all of them has made them some of the most complete, memorable characters I've read, even from Baldwin. 

The reason Baldwin's characters are able to stand out so much is because he does a masterful job of showing their interactions with each other, of illuminating each character by showing how they contrast with the others. The relationships in this book are so fascinating, from Rufus and Leona, a young black man from Harlem and a young Southern white women, to Ida and Vivaldo, a black woman and a poor white man. Even Cass and Richard, part of the more upper-crust white New York, became so complicated. And perhaps one of the best moments is when Baldwin takes us to Paris for a bit with Eric and Yves, revealing more about New York's chaos and calamity through contrast. Each relationship straddles the basic human desire to be seen and loved with the particular struggles of race, class, and power. The ensuing affairs add an extra layer as well. 

I thought Baldwin portrayed the difficulties of power dynamics within love and friendship so well. Interracial relationships are written so honestly, and even the ways in which friends use those who they know are less powerful than they is jarring. One of my favorite parts of Baldwin's characters is that there is never a clear moral line. Even in the case of the interracial relationships, the black woman is not always right, the white man is not always wrong. A character in an affair is as capable of love as the one being cheated on. Everyone is constructed to be so human that scenes feel much more like just beautiful, painful dialogue, not an opportunity to "preach" through a character as writers can sometimes do. 

I also just am amazed by the way Baldwin writes about America. This book, going between eight characters and encompassing many places, is probably the most direct ode to America of his fictional works. He manages to encapsulate its often mindless, brutalist, lonely quality while still loving its music, its vastness, the pain of its people. His portrayal is incredibly real.

The Downs: The only reason that this book did not quite reach the level of other Baldwin novels was one of the developments at the end. Two characters suddenly got together and realized they loved each other, when it wasn't hinted at during the rest of the book. I think the point was that it was supposed to be a revelation for the characters as well, but it felt very sudden and a little unsupported. I felt that the book would have been just as powerful without it, or maybe with a little more build up to that moment.

Rating: 4 kisses!