cover image Passing

Passing

Patricia Jones, Patricia J. Bacchus. Avon a, $14.99 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-380-80585-3

Generally the term ""passing"" refers to masquerades of race or sexuality, as in Nella Larsen's well-known novella Passing. The title of this clich -packed, overlong novel of African-American lives in Baltimore instead denotes class pretense. Eulelie Giles is the overly protective stepmother of four adult children in a privileged African-American family. An overt snob toward black people darker or less wealthy than she is, Eulelie has contributed her prejudices to the four siblings she has raised. In a narrative as obvious as this one, Eulelie's mean-spirited, ultra snooty airs indicate that she will be revealed as the product of an impoverished background. When Gil Giles announces that he plans to marry a working-class paralegal from East Baltimore, his family's latent bigotry is both revealed and challenged. Jones's trite prose is enervating, and even inadvertently funny: ""She woke with a start... like someone had set her underpants on fire."" The use of multiple narrators simply multiplies unanswered questions: is Gil an alcoholic? will Lila ever date handsome private detective Pick? By the end of the story, most readers will have ceased wondering. (Aug.)