Book Review: “Everyman” by M Shelly Conner

“Everyman” by M Shelly Conner (2021)

Genre: Historical Fiction

Page Length: 250 pages (electronic review edition)

Synopsis:

Eve Mann arrives in Ideal, Georgia, in 1972, looking for answers about the mother who died giving her life. A mother named Mercy. A mother who for all of Eve’s twenty-two years has been a mystery and a quest. Eve’s search for her mother, and the father she never knew, is a mission to discover her identity, her name, her people, her home.

Eve’s questions and longing launch a multigenerational story that sprawls back to the turn of the twentieth century, settles into the soil of the South, the blood and souls of Black folk making love and life, and fleeing into a Great Migration into the savage embrace of the North. Eve is a young woman coming of age in Chicago against the backdrop of the twin fires and fury of the civil rights and Black Power movements. A time when everything—and everyone, it seems—longs to be made anew.

At the core of this story are the various meanings of love, how we love and most of all who we love. everyman is peopled by rebellious Black women straining against the yoke of convention and designated identities, explorers announcing their determination to be and to be free. There is Nelle, Eve’s best friend and heart, who claims her right both to love women and to always love Eve as sister and friend.

Brother Lee Roy, professor and mentor, gives Eve the tools for her genealogical search while turning away from his own bitter harvest of family secrets. Mama Ann, the aunt who has raised Eve and knows everything about Mercy, offers Eve a silence that she defines as protection and care. It is James and Geneva, strangers Eve meets in Ideal who plumb the depths of their own hurt and reconciliations to finally give Eve the gift of her past, a reimagined present, and her name. (description from Goodreads)

Review:

Everyman is a novel rooted in family history as the main character, Every wants to discover the history behind her mom’s background as well as her family’s origins. She has a strained relationship with her aunt due to her not divulging her family and genealogy. Her aunt seems like she’s trying to protect her from some kind of harsh truth and in doing so pushes Every away from her. It’s a novel from the very beginning that takes us to multi-generations as well as various timelines as the narrator every tries to figure out what is family and what family means to her.

While this novel discusses generational and family history, it also brings up multiple discussions between the characters as what is defined as “Blackness” by society. Every frequently questions her family history and what it means to be black (as well as her entire identity). The novel opens up a larger conversation of different stereotypes and limitations are that are placed on people and places and how they stay throughout time (but evolve into different forms). I also like how we get details of Every’s history throughout the book and how people tend to record history throughout time.

Written record is privileged over oral tradition, and in the burying of the past it is the written word that must be plunged into hiding. It opens itself up to the reader, formed and solid. Nothing changes it. While the spoken history is in constant manipulation by the speaker. New tone. New emphasis. New words. New omissions. New additions.

An all I can say is that Everyman is one big generational family saga without giving away too much of the story. It not only heavily discusses race through multi-generations but additionally focuses on the impact of trauma and grief and so many more emotional. The first half of the book was very slow but the second half is where the plot comes together. Because it is a slow-moving novel, I recommend reading it in smaller chunks in order to capture the entire story.

Final Verdict: