Volponi, Paul (2005). Black and White. NY: Viking. ISBN: 0670060062. 160 pages.
I'm really not sure why this book got a starred review from Booklist; absent the high-interest-controvertial-premise, the narrative doesn't have a lot going for it. Marcus and Eddie are best friends and star basketball players who are known as "Black" (Marcus) and "White" (Eddie) in the neighborhood. The fact that they are of different races in a pretty racially polarized section of Long Island doesn't disrupt their friendship and stellar partnership on the court. Both boys' families struggle financially and, when neither has enough money to pay Senior Class dues and buy the hot pair of sneakers most of the team wears, they decide together to start sticking up old people in the neighborhood for cash. The first two robberies go well; during the third, however, Eddie accidentally discharges a gun and wounds their victim. After they flee the scene, both boys think they've gotten away with their scam and, although they're relieved to find that they didn't actually kill the man they held up, their use of the gun probably led their victim to go to the police and to identify the boys as thieves. Told in alternating chapters in the voices of both boys, we as readers can see the differences between black Marcus' experiences in the legal system and white and slightly less poor Eddie's. What I think is supposed to be a polemic about the judicial system, the differences between between the black and white urban poor experience, and the desperation of youth is not very well reaized. A multi-voiced novel should offer distinctly different narrative "voices"; in the case of Black and White, sometimes only the chapter titles and the slightly different type fonts let me know who was speaking at any time. |
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