Damn... This one really got to me. Daniella and Eve's story is over that will resonate with many, both here in the South and elsewhere. ( )

Enjoyed the friendship in book. Loved the bit about the voting rights. Did not the middle of the book. Some characters inconsistent ( )

It is as if there is a checklist of the major historical notes, and We Are All Good People here by Susan Rebecca White attempts to hit them all. In that, the book becomes a survey of the history. The story of the women becomes the vehicle for the history rather than the history becoming a background for the story. The history is there, but the story doesn't quite come together.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/03/we-are-all-good-people-here.html

Reviewed for NetGalley. ( )

We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca White is a highly recommended multi-generational drama that follows two college roommates over three decades.

The narrative begins in the radical 60's. Daniella Gold, from Georgetown, was raised by a Jewish father and a Methodist mother as a middle-class, liberal Unitarian. When she attends Belmont College in 1962, her roommate is Eve Whalen. Eve grew up as a privileged daughter of an old-money Atlanta family. Despite their different backgrounds, the two young women became best friends. For the first time, Eve actually notices prejudice and tries to improve conditions for their college house maid, but instead the results are harmful and ruinous. Daniella experienced prejudice before and continues to when she was told none of the sororities on campus would ask her to pledge due to her Jewish father. Eve, who had never experienced any prejudice, supports her and refuses to pledge in support of Daniella. They both transfer to Barnard College in NYC for their sophomore year.

At this time the two become more deeply involved in social issues and expand their awareness of the injustice and prejudice in the South. They also grow apart as Eve becomes more radical while Daniella works with others to bring about change and pursues her education. Daniella earns a law degree and marries. Eve takes up with a violent, radical anti-establishment, underground group and the two lose touch. When Eve is involved in a destructive tragedy, she turns to Daniella to overcome her radical past. The novel then jumps to the daughters of the two friends.

White excels at capturing the history, events, time, and place of the decades involved and covers the gamut of social injustices, racism, diversity, family, the South, history, religion, and the complexities of life. Starting with the sixties and moving through the decades to the nineties, the questions of social consciousness and morality continue to the end. If it sounds like it is a whole lot to cover, it is and although she does a very good job, it is almost too much to cover with any degree of serious insight. This means you have to go with the flow and follow the plot and the very basic social ramifications of the decades as presented to appreciate the novel. In reality, the entire time span is too complex to be captured in so few pages.

The quality of the writing is outstanding. The narrative is best viewed as women's fiction and a character study of the lives of these two women and their daughters. At the beginning of the novel when Daniella and Eve are well developed characters, but we lose this later in the novel when the focus shifts to their daughters. In some ways this was a regrettable choice as it makes only the early years of a woman's life as an interesting time. Sure we get glimpses of their lives, but lose the close contact with the characters.

In a chapter when Eve is radicalized, there is an incident with a cat that... (shaking head) is very hard to stomach and may be difficult for animal lovers to overcome. I hate having this scene in my head and I even skimmed through it after I realized where it was going.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria Books.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/08/we-are-all-good-people-here.html ( )

College roommates! If you’re unlucky, as I was, you will be relieved when she is expelled. If you’re lucky, you will get along. If you’re really lucky, you will have a lifetime friend. Daniella and Eve were really lucky. Their connection was deep and lasted through their lives. They first met at a small, Southern women’s college where Daniella was denied admission to a sorority because she is Jewish. She was actually Unitarian, but her father was Jewish and she called herself Jewnitarian. In solidarity, Eve refused her admission to the sorority and transferred with Daniella to Barnard in New York.

It was a time of activism and organizing and Eve and Daniella went on different paths, met and fell in love with very different men. It is interesting how Eve embodies the activist personality while Daniella is the organizer. They are very different. Eve writes a letter about how the school treats their maids, citing the experience of the maid she knows, who is promptly fired. She never once asks permission of the maid for whom she advocated. That’s an activist for you.

Daniella does the hard work of Freedom Summer, living with Black families and being guided by their opinion. Contrast Eve’s advocating for the maids with Daniella’s complex understanding of being a white ally. “They are the only ones who go through every day of their lives in colored skin, skin they cannot peel off just to have a temporary respite from the abuse it brings. They are the ones who can teach us about oppression in America, because they live on the receiving end of it . And they are the ones who can teach us about resistance, about standing up for human rights. Those of us with white skin can empathize, can stand in solidarity, but we can always trick ourselves into thinking things aren’t so bad. We are allowed to make up stories about “the race situation” because we don’t have to bear the burden of it on our own bodies.”

The difference between activism and organizing is profound and it continues to be a fault line in Eve and Daniella’s friendship. Eve feels contempt for Daniella’s commitment to working to change the system from within, “When it came to the system, the only thing you could “change from within” was yourself. Entering the system would change you. You would acclimate to its norms.” This is a common criticism of those seeking systemic change through lobbying and legislation, though it ignores the many degrees of “within” there are.

Eve’s activism leads to living underground until a crisis forces her to reach out for help to Daniella. The story continues to the next generation, until they, too, go to college. Through it all, you can see how the journey of an activist contrasts to an organizer as Eve is easily led to new enthusiasms while Daniella’s commitment is more measured and constant.

I enjoyed We Are All Good People Here. I don’t know if Susan Rebecca White intended to contrast activists with organizers, but she did. We see that same conflict now, between those who want to win change by doing the work and those who want to be seen wanting to win change. I loved how these women embodied two very different strains of the Sixties and Seventies and how their experiences then affected them and their daughters.

We Are All Good People Here will be released on August 6th. I received an e-galley for review from the publisher through NetGalley.

We Are All Good People Here at Atria | Simon & Schuster
Susan Rebecca White author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/07/22/9781451608915/ ( )