Admittedly, \u201cTeam Seven\u201d is Burke\u2019s first novel. For this, he deserves credit for a well-written novel.<\/p>\n
The book starts off with the narrator and main character, Andre, discussing his father\u2019s \u201cvitals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would ask Pop about his strange-smelling funny-cigarettes but I\u2019m afraid to ask him questions anymore. He\u2019s always in a rush and never tells me where he\u2019s going when he leaves.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, we\u2019re made to understand, the narrator is a youngster. Yet, this problem remains through the entire narrative: there is only rarely, or never, indication of time and the character\u2019s respective ages\/grades in the context of the time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Were one to presume the story takes place in a timeless place, between say the 1990s and the 2000s, the issue still strongly remains that the characters\u2019 ages throughout the time-line are never given, casting doubt on their use of language and the plot.<\/p>\n
The plot<\/b>
\nAndre grows up in a not-incredible part of Boston, plays ball, gets involved in the marijuana trade and eventually leaves high school, presumably a graduate. Who knows. The book is not clear, of either Andre\u2019s age, if he\u2019s still in high school, or had graduated by the end.<\/p>\n
Andre sort-of comes of age in a culture of violence and drugs. Andre, as one might guess, becomes a product of the society he grows up in, smoking more pot than any reasonable adult should, let alone a teenager. He drinks. He makes misogynistic comments about women and plays out those comments in his actions. He goes to church with his mother. He plays ball, and hustles at it. He strifes with his Jamaican-born father.<\/p>\n
That is not to write, women are somehow saintly. No, everyone is steeped in violence and plays that violence out in their lives.<\/p>\n
Almost everybody speaks in dialect, which it appears Burke has managed to keep up during the entirety of the book. (There is a strong danger, I believe, when writing in dialect, because one it is begun, it may not stop. Plus, it\u2019s often hard to understand what\u2019s being said.)<\/p>\n
Although \u201cTeam Seven\u201d is well written, and that decent writing carries much of the book, the plot is relatively thin.<\/p>\n
The incongruities in voice<\/b>
\nThe narrator\u2019s voice, which is what often gives hints of the age of the characters, jumps around. A seemingly little boy uses language to describe his surroundings more appropriate for a teenager, in terms of vulgarity and swearing.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m all for swearing. I work in a newsroom where swearing his the norm, although sometimes are foul language goes too far. I do not believe swearing is a sign, as some might argue, of weak writing. I believe a writer should use every tool available, from big words to swear words.<\/p>\n
However, the amount of cursing in the narrator\u2019s voice, that is to say, everything outside of dialogue, becomes tiresome and redundant. Further, it is often at odds (as mentioned mere paragraphs above) with the presumed age of the narrator.<\/p>\n
Burke lays it on much too thick. We get it, man, we get it. It\u2019s a nasty world out there.<\/p>\n
Coming of what?<\/b>
\nIt\u2019s certainly odd to have a coming of age story, coming of age from a pre-teen to that of a semi-adult, with no mention of where that person falls at any given point on the age scale. Or, where the other characters fall on that age scale.<\/p>\n
Andre\u2019s friends\/fellow dealers, the main character\u2019s, that is, are in high school. Some are out of high school. Maybe? The book is never clear on the true standing of most of the characters. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. A strong detraction that could have very easily been fixed, and should have.<\/p>\n
From hypocrite, to . . . Hypocrite<\/b>
\nAndre sleeps around a little bit, as do his friends, who have their own various mistresses. But he always comes back to Tunnetta, AKA, Chocolate Chip.<\/p>\n\u201cHe ripped pen his chocolate chip muffin (sic) and held it in the air like he was Rafiki from the Lion King<\/i> holding Simba toward the sun.
\n\u2018The side of Tunnetta\u2019s face, ladies and gentlemen!\u2019 He spun himself around in a dramatic circle and curtseyed.
\nI never called her that but the nickname stuck, and bad skin, big tits, and pretty eyes was all Tunnetta \u2018Chocolate Chip\u2019 Johnson was known for around school. She wasn\u2019t really a good look for me, but I was curious.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So here we have the narrator, still with his \u201cv-card,\u201d presumably a freshman in high school, already having mastered the intricacies of the social order. He enjoys screwing Tunnetta, but thinks less of her for sleeping around. Despite his own sleeping around, but men should never confront society\u2019s double standard of promiscuity, right?<\/p>\n
Besides, this girl he\u2019s screwing around with, when her boyfriend punches her in the face, it\u2019s not his place to step in. That\u2019s why he\u2019s on his way to becoming a man.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the incongruity between what the character\u2019s say, AKA, no man ever hits a woman, and what they do, and allow others to do, is not addressed.<\/p>\n
Multiple narrators, sort of<\/b>
\n\u201cTeam Seven\u201d starts out with multiple narrators. The Jamaican-born father and Andre\u2019s mother, Ruby. But they each get maybe one to two of the 14 chapters. It\u2019s not clear why they even narrate, mostly at the beginning of the book, if their voices never reappear.<\/p>\n
It seems like the author started in one place, finished in another, and never cleaned up his book to reflect the beginning or the end.<\/p>\n
Show, not tell<\/strong>
\n\u201cTeam Seven\u201d is, fortunately, broken up, for the most part, into scenes. However, at the beginning of each chapter, there is usually a whole bunch of telling before whatever is going on in that scene begins. Which is annoying and, with the lack of viable age or other true clues to timeline, becomes confusing.<\/p>\nTake for example this little tid-bit. Notice the change from past to present tense. It\u2019s not even clear when the narrator is speaking from. Is he speaking from a place in the future of the action he\u2019s narrating if so, how far? Is he speaking in the present of his situation, or is he looking back mere days, speaking of the situation he is currently in, referencing the very-recent past? Who knows.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen school lets out, the drama of the hallway turns real. You\u2019ll get your issue if you got one. This is how it worked. Basically you had to be some type of somebody. We latchkey kids all walked together in a huddle, but won\u2019t get it twisted, we were not together. The pack was like a prison yard, everyone had their territory. People step out they zone and it turns into a jungle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The conclusion is summarily confusing, mixing the present tense with the recent past, the current event with recent similar past events (bible studying.)<\/p>\n
The end<\/b>
\nFor a first novel, \u201cTeam Seven\u201d is a good try with good writing that could have used lots and lots more grounding.<\/p>\n
This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program.
\nAll quotes are taken from a bound galley version of the book and may, or may not, reflect the final commercial edition.<\/i><\/p>\n
On Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Seven, while well-written, suffers from a lack of a coherent timeline and organization, lending significant doubt to its character\u2019s actions, language, etc. Perhaps unfortunately for my opinion of the book, it came on the heels of the excellent novel \u201cAstonish Me\u201d by Maggie Shipstead, which has a similar structure and pacing. While Shipstead\u2019s novel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelerc.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}