Member Reviews

Initial reaction: Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush is a book with a solid story and foundation behind it. It's the first Virginia Hamilton book I've read in years, and while it took me a little longer to get through it than some of her works (House of Dies Drear, Justice and Her Brothers), I appreciated much of what it offered - offering the story of a girl who meets a ghost. It's the kind of story that says you have to study the past in order to learn what steps to take in the present.

Probably rating this somewhere between 3 and 3.5 stars.

Full review:

I have not returned to this book in so long and I originally read it as a galley from NetGalley back in 2012 from Open Road Media, which published a lot of back-titles from Virginia Hamilton. As you may know from what I've mentioned before, Virginia Hamilton was one of my favorite authors as a kid. I feel pretty solid giving this a 3.5 star rating overall - it was a story worth coming back to. I re-read it again this year so I could have a fresh perspective of it. It's a winner of both the Newbery Honor Award, Coretta Scott King award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1983.

Teresa (Tree) is a teen girl, 14, who encounters Brother Rush and finds that she's the only one who can see him in his formal attire and with his cool demeanor. She develops a very quick crush on him, but realizes there's more to Brother Rush's appearance than meets the eye when he shows up inside her home. I still remember very vividly the moment she realizes the dude's a ghost and how she freaked out.

One of the reasons why this particular story appealed to me the first time I read it was because it's a ghost story -YA ghost stories and ghost stories in general are my jam. Also for the fact that Tree is a girl who takes on a LOT of responsibilities for her age. She takes care of her brother Dab who has a developmental disability while also caring for things in the house while her mother M'vy works away from home. You get the message very early on that Dab comes home from school and has issues that need caring for, as well as their mother very intentionally staying out of the house most days. Through a series of flashbacks, Brother Rush gives Tree an eye into her family's past, which carries a lot of weight and eye opening confrontations than Tree realized. This is a story with its share of heartbreak, though told in a way that's compelling.

I liked getting to know Tree in this. Her voice is authentic as you note her love for her mother and brother, likes and dislikes, and how she interacts with Brother Rush. Tree watches Brother Rush's visions presented to her through vividly drawn moments of flashbacks. Hamilton's use of dialect and prose bring you right along with Tree in her reliving of certain key events in her family life, including that of Rush's death, her mother's treatment of Dab, among other things. It's a coming of age/coming to terms story that doesn't hold back or talk down to the audience, but rather allows you to watch Tree come to these realizations about Brother Rush and her family.

There are certain aspects of this story that show its age for language and rep. One example, which I marked down for rating because of how it came across - if we look at how the approach to Dab's disability, care, and other aspects of his character are presented, they could have been a lot better for the way we note disability rep in fiction today. But to its credit, it showcases some very real (and hurtful) attitudes about how people see - particularly Black people - with disabilities and stereotype/stigmatize them. I got even back when I read it that Hamilton was presenting that with the intention of showcasing how horrible people treat those with conditions like Dab. I connected with Dab as well and seeing what happens to him broke my heart. Still, the overarching story of this was well worth following for what it offered. I know this is a story I would come back to re-reading and keep in my collection. I'm glad that it's included in the more recent release of Virginia Hamilton's omnibus collection. (Which includes "House of Dies Drear", "Zeely" and other stories.)

Overall score: 3.5/5 stars.

Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley from the publisher Open Road Media.

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