Loving Day by Mat Johnson
What intrigued me about this book was that it was set in Philadelphia and that it’s fundamentally about what it’s like to be of mixed-race in America. I love reading about people whose experiences are different from mine and I’d hoped to get a thrill out of reading about some scenes from the city I’m so fond of.
When the novel starts we know that Warren is flat broke, split with his wife, and back home in Germantown, a neighborhood he associates with a childhood he was glad to leave behind. He’s inherited his father’s house, Loudin mansion, a hulking ramshackle money pit. Warren soon hatches on the plan to burn it to the ground and collect the insurance money. Then there’s a complication. He meets a girl named Tal, who is the daughter of a girl Warren screwed as a teenager. Now Warren feels like he has to be a dad, though he hasn’t had much experience with responsibility.
Warren, despite his Irish father, sees himself as black. Tal considers herself white. Being black is such a core part of Warren’s identity that he sees Tal’s racial self-image as something he needs to correct. He first enrolls her at a charter school with an African-American influence, but then moves her to another school that is designed for people with both black and white parents.
The school, like many of its participants, doesn’t quite fit description. Half circus, half commune, it’s housed in trailers and mobile homes. Warren starts teaching there, and he’s also been given assignments to complete, so it’s like he’s half teacher, half student. He becomes romantically involved with a woman who’s involved with the school, but is conflicted because she’s in an open relationship. Then Tal sees what she believes are ghosts at Loudin mansion, and Warren’s decrepit house becomes the new center of this mixed-race commune.
This book wasn’t written for me, but I enjoyed it anyway. It was hard to read in parts. Stylistically, I got confused with the lack of attribution at points, having to reread passages to figure out who was saying what. Emotionally it was hard because Warren and many of the people he’s close to seem determined to make a mess of their lives, almost as if destroying their lives is the only power they know they can reliably wield. I wasn’t really in love with the characters, but reading this book was like peering through the windows of my neighbors to see what other people struggle with.
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