1.) Genevieve by Eric Jerome Dickey

Can a person give love unconditionally, especially knowing a dark secret about you and your past? Could you ever look at that person in the same light after revealing a hauntingly abusing background? Can you forgive as though the action has never happened? These are questions author Eric Jerome Dickey asks in his 11th novel, "Genevieve."


Dickey is a self made author, having graduated from The Universuuty of Memphis with a Computer System Technology degree and moving to L.A. to pursue an acting and comedian career. He found his love of writing while constructing scripts for comedy. What was supposed to be a short story turned into a three hundred page novel. He took many workshops in creative writing and had even had a couple of short stories published before embarking on finishing his novel.The drive to be make something of oneself is evident not only in Dickey's life but in his novel as he paints the picture of our somewhat absent character, Genevieve.

An undergraduate at Spelman, to UCLA and then a Ph.D in Finances at Pepperdine University, Genevieve has come a long way from her roots in Odenville, Alabama. Her husband who remains nameless through out the book narrates his admiration and intimidation of his wife even though he is an Aids Reseach Doctor. He is our guide into his marriage, and his inner turmoil with "too much" love for his wife and feeling that it is unreturned as she refuses to reveal her past. In keeping this from her husband his resentment for her grows as well as put distance between them. Th rift in their marriage is tested when Genevieve is summoned back to Odenville for a funeral, forcing her to relive her past and unearth demons she had so desperately been trying to bury. For her husband, he is introduced for the first time to her relatives including the freespirited younger sister Kenya who encompasses the attributes Genevieve had left behind years ago.

Where the novel is trying to convey the sense of mystery and intrigue mixed with an illicited love affair, the end result seems to be a mess. The nameless husband, our protagonist tries to justify his actions as a result of an unloving family structure, his wife suncess, and their stagnent sexlife. Genevieve almost has no character what so ever other than a neurotic. While Kenya seems to embody more of a hoodrat than than the taudry mistress that lures him away from his wife.

Personally not one of my favorite....