Nancy Johnson (1)Critiques

I finished this awhile ago (and thought I already reviewed it!) I devoured the book in just a few days, and the story has stuck with me.
The author read a chapter of this book in its early stages a few years ago at one of our writer retreats and the piece stuck with me. I'm so glad I've been able to read the whole story now.
Yes, the story talks about racism in our country, but it also focuses on family, what makes a family, and what tests a family and relationships.
It's a great must-read!

I would not recommend. 👎🏼

Ruth Tuttle at 17 years old had a baby boy in a small town of Indiana. But her grandma immediately took the child away and she went in another direction: Yale. After 11 years, she decided to return from her plush home in Chicago with her husband to find out from her grandma what happened to her son that she never knew. Her grandma lived in a simple house where she was always ready to serve a meal.

While reading, I could see the image of the streets with their favorite bars, churches and hair salons. I could picture each character. My favorite was her grandmother who reminded me of my own mother of the same generation being very direct with whatever was on her mind. She said to Ruth: "I'm real proud of you. But you know they're not going to have you on that job for very long with that wild hair." The book made me recall how women from my mother's time put money in their bras for safe keeping. She had one brother and commented "as much as folks refuse to admit it, mothers love their children differently."

I could easily see how this book could be made someday into a movie. The novel speaks about race and how one family solved their problems in a small town. I highly recommend it. The book will be released in February, 2021.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGallery for allowing me to read an advanced copy.

I understand why this book is popular in the female population. There's a lot to relate to.
I need to grow up some more, experience more in life to properly wrap my head around the other stuff that come with parenting.

I was a 3 for most of this book, but the ending was exceptionally well done, and there were moments in the book where I paused to repeat what had been said. This is pretty slow and there isn't a lot of plot, but Ruth's character development was great. I especially loved her relationship with Xavier.

It didn’t make a lot of sense how Ruth went from not giving a shit about her kid for a decade to suddenly becoming obsessed with how he turned up. She was a chemical engineer but couldn’t put 2 and 2 together that her kids adoption *might* not be perfectly legal. And then the harmonious ending where Xavier is like missed u love u is just annoying. It wasn’t exactly bad it just wasn’t good either.

This book covered a lot of big topics - race, class, motherhood, marriage, family - and did so very well. The characters are real and relatable and you can empathize with all of them. The one thing that bothered me is the main character's lack of forethought about what would happen if she interrupted his life. She was a very smart woman and this seemed odd to me but I then also remember that she is still young - late 20's - and there is a world of growing up that still happens at that young. Man, I'm old. lol! A very impressive debut novel and I will look for more from this author in the future.

Honestly, just a very average story - nothing stood out really, good or bad.

Book on CD narrated by Shayna Small
3***

Ruth Tuttle is a chemical engineer married to a marketing executive and living the good life in Chicago. Obama has just been elected President and Ruth’s husband feels the time is right for them to start a family. But Ruth isn’t so sure. What Xavier doesn’t know is that she had a child when she was in high school and gave up that child so she could continue her education. Now she feels she needs to go back to Ganton, Indiana and confront her family about what happened to her baby.

There’s a good premise here and some interesting family dynamics, but I thought Johnson relied too much on the secrets and failed to make sense of the present. Ruth is supposed to be this brilliant scientist and yet she behaves just as impulsively as Midnight, the young white boy she befriends. I get that this is an emotionally fraught situation, but she doesn’t seem to ever sit and think things through before acting.

And I was really bothered by the situation with Midnight, a child who desperately needs parenting. I can understand why he acts out as he does – he’s just a kid and lacks stability at home. And I totally get it that children in these kinds of situations rarely have a happy ending. But Johnson seems to just drop Midnight’s storyline without so much s a by your leave.

Still, Johnson captured my attention early and kept me turning pages (or changing discs). I wanted to know what would happen to these people and how their stories would play out. This is her debut novel, and I think a little more work (and editing) might have made this a very memorable work.

Shayna Small does a fine job narrating the audiobook. She has a believable voice for the 10-year-old Midnight, as well as the many adults in the novel.

Nancy Johnson’s “The Kindest Lie” delivers a beautiful story, but unfortunately, she injects it full of racist comments and other issues (addressed below) which destroy what would otherwise be a wonderful tale.

The story is told from two points of view, that of Ruth, the protagonist, and Midnight. It should have been told from the POV of Ruth and Corey, whom the entire story is centered on, not Midnight, who is just a friend of Corey’s. Despite not being named at the start, the entire book revolves around Corey, not Midnight. But Johnson paints Corey simply as a friend of Midnight, elevating Midnight to a place he does not deserve.

The characters are poorly developed and stereotypical in nature. The main character, Ruth, is selfish, judgmental, totally naïve, completely self-centered, and a huge racist. Yes, she is black and racist. She had the privilege of attending an Ivy League school and has a great job, but fails to appreciate the hard work and sacrifices her parents made so she could be so fortunate. She feels she deserves all that was given to her, as if it were a birthright. Her husband’s character, Xavier is hardly developed or mentioned at all. He spends most of the book back home, out of mind and out of sight. The rest of the characters are equally one-dimensional and poorly developed.

Speaking of characters, there are way too many characters in the book. Many make a single appearance and are never heard from again. If they are that minor, why put them in the book? I am reminded of the quote about Chekhov’s gun: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.” These superfluous characters serve as nothing more than padding to achieve a specified page count. When I read a novel, I keep a list of characters. Usually it takes no more than a single page. My list for this book was four pages, totally over 60 characters! What a waste of paper. The characters were all stereotypical. The black characters all praised Obama and hated white people. All of the white characters hated Obama and hated all blacks. That is not how the world is, Ms. Johnson. I thought we were not supposed to judge on skin color, but that is how Johnson has all of her characters act.

I mentioned the book is racist. Every character is mentioned as being either black or white. Why is it necessary to tell the reader that a café waitress is white? What difference does it make what race she is? The book places too much emphasis on each character’s race. One example is when the police pull out their guns and point them at a black boy, but not at a white boy. Johnson tries to make it seem the police only pointed their gun at the boy because he is black. Actually, they pointed their guns at him because he was holding and firing a gun, whereas the white boy was not holding a gun. Johnson made everything about race in this book, which destroyed what would otherwise be a great story of love.

As I have mentioned, the characters are stereotypical in nature. The black characters try to “out-black” each other claiming they are more black acting that the others. They also play the “I’m poorer than you game.” This is where one says they were so poor they had buckets to catch the leaks in the roof of their house. The other character then says, “You had a house? We lived in the projects.” Then another says, “We lived in a homeless shelter.” This game gets old after a while.

Johnson tries to make Ruth the hero of the story, but because of her selfish nature, she ends up destroying the lives of others with no regard to their feelings. It is all about her.

It is sad what could have been a great story was ruined by selfish, stereotypical, racist, and poorly developed characters. Skip this book!

THE KINDEST LIE had really interesting characters and a setting I enjoyed reading. Ruth is an engineer, in a happy marriage living in Chicago, and is about to turn 30. Her husband is ready to start having children. She is trying to figure out how to tell him that eleven years ago, back when she was in high school, she had a baby and gave him up for adoption. This book examines family relationships, both Ruth’s (I particularly loved her complex relationship with her grandmother and brother) and that of Patrick “Midnight”, a young white boy who Ruth encounters in her grandmother’s store. Ruth has a complicated past not only because of the baby she gave up as a teen, but also because her own mother left her and her brother with her grandmother due to drug use. Patrick/Midnight is going through a rough patch at home where his grandmother fears she may not have enough money to continue having him stay with her. He is close friends with Corey, a boy at school who has defended him from bullies, and who he has protected as well.

I really liked the way information and backstory was slowly revealed over the course of the book. I liked the way relationships were complicated and characters were mostly gray morally, rather than black or white. This was easily a five-star read for me until several things happened near the very end of the book which lowered the rating for me. The first was what happened with Patrick/Midnight in the final scene, which felt out of character.

What really made the scene jarring was that after Ruth defuses the 911 incident, and could have simply stood aside and waited with the boys until their parents arrived, she instead chooses to unload all her drama about how she’s secretly Corey’s biological mother on him, an innocent 11-year-old child, right then when he was nearly the victim of a police shooting and is shaking and curled into a ball sobbing, when she knows he was never told by his parents that he is adopted. The selfishness of a 30-year-old woman making a choice like that to take a child’s moment of terrible trauma and make it all about her made it hard for me to sympathize with her character after that.

THE KINDEST LIE had really interesting characters and a setting I enjoyed reading. Ruth is an engineer, in a happy marriage living in Chicago, and is about to turn 30. Her husband is ready to start having children. She is trying to figure out how to tell him that eleven years ago, back when she was in high school, she had a baby and gave him up for adoption. This book examines family relationships, both Ruth’s (I particularly loved her complex relationship with her grandmother and brother) and that of Patrick “Midnight”, a young white boy who Ruth encounters in her grandmother’s store. Ruth has a complicated past not only because of the baby she gave up as a teen, but also because her own mother left her and her brother with her grandmother due to drug use. Patrick/Midnight is going through a rough patch at home where his grandmother fears she may not have enough money to continue having him stay with her. He is close friends with Corey, a boy at school who has defended him from bullies, and who he has protected as well.

If I hadn't been reading this for a book club, I'd never have bothered finishing the book. At best, it's mediocre.

The plot revolves around Ruth, an African-American engineer married to a marketing executive (back in the day, we'd have called them "buppies"), who, when her husband wants to start a family, starts to wonder about the child to whom she gave birth when she was seventeen (and whose existence is unknown to her husband). So she goes back to the rust belt Indiana town where she was raised by her grandmother, and from which she has kept her distance since her graduation from Yale, to see what she can find. She becomes involved with a poor white boy, nicknamed Midnight, about the same age as her son would be.

The characters are very superficially drawn; you get no real sense of their motivations or emotions. The protagonist is unlikeable. She is selfish and self-centered, to the point that when she first encounters her son, in hard circumstances, she blurts out to him their relationship and how she gave him up. Appallingly selfish. Everything is all about her, her wants, her needs, nobody else matters to her.

The plotting is pretty bad, too. With no evidence, Ruth decides that Midnight's friend, Corey, is her son (of course, it turns out that he is). Also with no evidence, she decides that a) her grandmother handed the kid over to another couple with no actual adoption, and b) that there was an adoption through a crooked lawyer. Pick one, lady.

Johnson seems to want to draw some lessons about race and class in America, but it all seems just tacked on.

It didn't help matters that she got some basic facts wrong, things that are easily checked. For example, the book begins on the night of Barack Obama's first election to the presidency, and she says there was "light snow" in Bronzeville (a Chicago neighborhood). It was 70º in Chicago that evening!

This was an excellent way to show the diversity of black families....and with a white family with problems as a major part of the story. I do wonder how Ruth works out her relationships and what happens to Midnight's grandmother over time, with her medical problems. Yes, these are questions beyond the real point(s) of this novel. Very easy to read, wonderful descriptions that allow the reader to really see what's happening, thanks to Johnson's terrific but somehow very accurate presentations of real life situations.

This story pulled me in two different directions at once, particularly around the adoption itself. I had a lot of sympathy for the main character and how her choices were made for her. But I was also offended that she thought of her biological child as "her son" when he was obviously part of a different family and the son of a different mother. For much of the novel she is focused not on what might be good for her son but what she thought would be fair for herself. There was a good exploration of what it means to be family and what kinds of actions might be justified in the name of love.

Ruth Tuttle at 17 years old had a baby boy in a small town of Indiana. But her grandma immediately took the child away and she went in another direction: Yale. After 11 years, she decided to return from her plush home in Chicago with her husband to find out from her grandma what happened to her son that she never knew. Her grandma lived in a simple house where she was always ready to serve a meal.

While reading, I could see the image of the streets with their favorite bars, churches and hair salons. I could picture each character. My favorite was her grandmother who reminded me of my own mother of the same generation being very direct with whatever was on her mind. She said to Ruth: "I'm real proud of you. But you know they're not going to have you on that job for very long with that wild hair." The book made me recall how women from my mother's time put money in their bras for safe keeping. She had one brother and commented "as much as folks refuse to admit it, mothers love their children differently."

I could easily see how this book could be made someday into a movie. The novel speaks about race and how one family solved their problems in a small town. I highly recommend it. The book will be released in February, 2021.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGallery for allowing me to read an advanced copy.

Ruth is the main character in The Kindest Lie. She grew up in a poor, segregated town in Indiana. Her mother abandoned Ruth and her brother Eli due to her drug addiction leaving Ruth's grandparents to raise them. Ruth was highly intelligent, motivated and supported by her grandparents. One wrong romance led to a pregnancy 9 months before she was to leave for Yale. She left her son with her grandmother and pursued her chemical engineering degree.

The story opens eleven years later. Ruth has kept the birth of her son a secret but that fact is making it hard for her to start a family with her husband. In order to get on with her life she returns to Ganton, Indiana to find her son and learn what happened to him.

There are many deeply sympathetic and deeply problematic characters in this novel. But I throughly enjoyed learning about them and following Ruth's story.

Good book. Black and white issues well presented. All enjoyable people. I want to know what to the people.½

Wow! For a first novel, this woman can really write! A great story & characters and there is so much to think about here; Motherhood, poverty, racism, marriage, friendship, and it's set in Indiana & Chicago with a history of the south for the characters. I started it in the morning meaning to just get a look at it, but it kept calling me back, so I finished it the same day.

This is a powerful book about love, loss, looking forward, looking back, race, privilege, education, and choices. Nancy Johnson has packed a lot into this debut novel.
Ruth is a successful black chemical engineer married to a successful man. Her success didn't come easily. When she was 17, she had a child, and her grandmother gave the baby away, saying that this child could not get in the way of Ruth's Ivy League education. Ruth has never told her husband, Xavier, about her son. Now married four years, and on the verge of the first Obama presidency, Xavier is anxious to start their family.
Ruth realizes that she must confess this secret to Xavier in order to move forward. Ruth must leave Chicago's South Side and return to her roots in Indiana to try to find her son.
While in Indiana, Ruth meets Midnight (Patrick), a young white boy who acts like he is black. She knows that both he and Ruth are searching for love.
Ruth confronts her grandmother, her brother, and her friends until she finds the truth about her son, which helps her find the answers she craves.
The novel explores the differences in race and privilege, and the choices we make. Outstanding and thought provoking novel.
Thanks to Harper Collins, The Book Club Girls, Edelweiss.plus and NetGalley for a copy of this ARC. All opinions are my own, and are given freely.
#TheKindestLie #HarperCollins #TheBookClubGirls #Edelweiss #NetGalley.

I received an Advance Reader's Copy of this book.

This is an impressive debut novel about very timely topics - identity and race and opportunity. Set in 2008 immediately following Barack Obama's election, this story is about Ruth, a black woman who is a successful engineer and Yale graduate. Her husband Xavier is ready to start a family with her, but Ruth has a secret from her past that she needs to reconcile before she can become a parent with Xavier. She goes back to her hometown to face the choices she made in her youth. I was taken in by this story right from the beginning and cared about all of its characters. Nancy Johnson has written a novel that serves as a great start to reflection on and discussion about race, a book that would be a wonderful choice for book club.

This may be a debut novel but I can assure you that Nancy Johnson will author many outstanding books that I (and hopefully you) will enjoy. She's a brilliant writer, excellent storyteller, and found a way to capture my interest from the beginning and never once had a dull moment. You will not want to put it down. Enjoy!

"One thing I learned a long time ago is that you can't live your life looking back."

Thank you @williammorrowbooks for the gifted copy.

Bookdragon rating 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

I finished The Kindest Lie a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about it because there is so much to unpack. This novel was a perfect blend of rich character and plot development. It starts out very slow but so many layers and back story are added on that the wait is worth it. By the time the story reached its peak, it was so tense I was literally holding my breath. The writing style is so beautiful and poetic that you are captivated from the very first sentence. It was an emotional roller coaster but I'm glad I went for the ride. Ruth and Midnight played tug of war with my heart the entire time.

This book is a window into a segment of the country that isn't always in the spotlight. Your own perspective will be tested with the different dilemmas each character is facing and the decisions they choose to make. Each one is essentially in survival mode trying to maintain secrets and lies but the truth always comes out at the worst times.

I was left pondering:

- What defines motherhood? How do you begin to mother in the future when the choices about your own body were taken away?
- How can you live an authentic life while holding on to so much pain and keeping secrets?
- How do you fill the void of feeling unwanted by your parents?
- Does lying for the greater good ever pan out?
- How could Ruth's family and Lena's family never address the very real racial barriers/ bias in their friendship?
- How will Midnight deal with his brewing racial tensions?
- Does marraige automatically require full disclosure of past trauma?
- How does society return the innocence of youth back to Black children?
- How do groups with similar struggles of varying degrees come to a place of open communication and move past the biases?
- Class and education cannot save you from the violence of racism.

My mind is still spinning with so many thoughts. This book is timely, necessary and beautifully written. I cannot wait to see else the author has in store for us because this debut packed a punch.

Wow! Searing social commentary and a gripping plot are combined in this story about upward mobility, race, class, and privilege. The world is looking good when Barack Obama is elected for the black community and Ruth and Xavier are ready to celebrate, but when its time to start a family, Ruth must explain she is already a mother. At 17, she gave birth to a son who was adopted by an unknown family. Ruth went on to graduate from Yale and marry a PepsiCo marketing executive, but now her conscious is bothering her, and she returns to her childhood home to find her son. Instead, she finds an 11-year-old white kid named Midnight. Midnight’s mother died in childbirth. Ruth and Midnight’s lives become more and more connected as this story is told in alternating chapters. As Ruth’s grandmother warns, ‘You keep turning up the dirt, you bound to run into a snake one day. And it’s going to bite you. Real hard.”

Sometimes you read a book, and you know its going to be one that you will tell everyone about it, until they ask you to please stop. Nancy Johnson's debut novel, The Kindest Lie, is one of those.

Ruth Tuttle is a Yale-educated Black engineer at a consumer packaged goods company. She's married to Xavier, a high-level executive at PespiCo. They live in Chicago, and are celebrating the election of Barack Obama with their friends.

Life is good, and when Xavier talks of now starting a family with Ruth, she balks. Ruth never told her husband that when she was seventeen, she gave birth to a baby. Her grandmother and older brother Eli took the baby and gave him up for adoption. Ruth left for Yale and it was never spoken of again.

Ruth returns home to Indiana, to her hometown of Ganton, whose "very soil was a trapdoor, a gateway to nothingness that few people climbed out of." The author paints a vivid picture of Ganton in that one sentence. The town relied on one big industry, a car manufacturing plant, and when that plant closed, the entire town was decimated.

When Ruth stops into a local small store owned by her grandmother's best friend Lena, a white woman, she meets Midnight, Lena's eleven year-old grandson. Midnight's arm was disfigured, and he "stood on the outside of things, bitter, chafed by the unfairness of life". His mother died giving birth to his sister, who also died. His father lost his job at the plant, and spent his time drinking, so Midnight lived mostly with his grandmother.

Ruth feels a kinship with Midnight. She and her brother were raised by her grandparents, her mother had a drug problem and left, she never knew her father. Ruth's grandparents sacrificed much to send Ruth to Yale, knowing that she could be successful if she left Ganton.

Confronting her grandmother and brother about what happened to her baby does not go well for Ruth. They insist that they did what was best for all involved, and tell her to leave it alone, but she is determined to find her son.

The story is told from the viewpoints of Ruth and Midnight. The author succeeds in putting the reader in their shoes, these two characters who have lived such different lives, yet share so much. You feel deeply for everyone, that they are doing the best they can. It is a gift that Nancy Johnson can allow the reader to see each character's side of the story.

The Kindest Lie is a heartbreaking, beautifully written novel that tackles race, class and gives us insight into what happens when a small town's industry disappears, the myriad of ways it destroys people. It is a richly developed story, with so much humanity contained within its pages. I think everyone can relate to something in this book. When I can't stop thinking about these characters, I know that I have read something profound that touched me deeply. I give The Kindest Lie my highest recommendation, and encourage everyone to read this book.