A Love Noire: A Novel

By Erica Simone Turnipseed

Book Overview

When Noire, a hip, Afro-wearing Ph.D. student, walks into Brown Betty Books, her righteousness kicks into overdrive amid the self-identified "talented tenth" who wear their double degrees and five-hundred-dollar shoes like badges of honor. And then Innocent walks in, sits down beside her, and turns her on her head. A dashing, well-heeled investment banker originally from Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, Innocent seems interested in her ... but he's one of them. Before meeting him, Noire shunned the "bourgie" world of black monied cosmopolitans like Innocent, opting instead for socially conscious -- but economically challenged -- artists and urban intellectuals. Their mutual attraction blossoms into lust and eventually love, but it lives in the shifting sands of personal beliefs and professional ambitions that are often at odds. Set in present-day New York City with jaunts to Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean, A Love Noire is the story of an unlikely couple that struggles to discover whether their passion will keep them together, or if their differences will tear them apart. Stripped to their barest selves, Innocent and Noire transcend all they've known to learn the redemptive power of love. A Love Noire offers an insider's look at color and class struggles, urban living, life in Africa, the notoriously unpredictable and heady New York dating scene, and good old-fashioned love. A natural and potent storyteller, Ms. Turnipseed writes of love and family with grace, and A Love Noire , her debut, marks the arrival of a resonant, sparkling voice in contemporary fiction.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060536799
• ISBN13: 9780060536794
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Amistad Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Looking At Love From All Angles -- Class, Ethnicity, Family

What I loved about "A Love Noire" is that it examines the question most people in relationships have to answer for themselves sooner or later: Is love enough? Or, in the case of us children of the African Diaspora, "Is *Black* love enough?". Innocent and Noire share race, superior academic credentials, and ambition. And love. That's about it. Despite the fact that Noire is a PhD candidate at NYU and Innocent is a Columbia MBA'd investment banker, they come from different classes -- Innocent's family is among the upper class elite while Noire's family is at best middle class; different ethnicities -- Noire's family hails from New York, the South, and islands off of the Southeastern coast while Innocent's family is from the Ivory Coast (but he and his siblings are, like many elites, "world citizens"); and different family compositions -- Innocent's parents have been married forever and his family composition nuclear, while Noire's parents never married each other and never made it clear to her that their failure to do so wasn't because of her. Added to the mix are the judgments and hangups of their equally well-credentialed friends of African descent as to whether Innocent and Noire's relationship can make it. At first, Innocent and Noire's differences make their relationship interesting and edgy in a kind of Black "Sex in the City" Big-and-Carrie kind of way. Towards the end, those differences become the bases for their (and others') doubts as to whether the relationship can endure. For me, it raised the question I once had to resolve for myself: How different can you be from someone and still have a lasting relationship with them? What I hope Innocent and Noire will come to know in the sequel (There will be a sequel, won't there?) is the answer I came to myself: If you share the same values, love can endure. What I enjoyed about this book is that it makes one think about what it takes to make love work, especially Black love.

EXCELLENT SOIRE BEYOND THE STANDARD FORMULA

In Love Noire, Ms. Turnipseed offers a refreshing story that features real three demenional people struggling with romance and career and the difficult choices that reality offers. Ms. Turnipseed suceeds in telling a love story as most people live it, with having to juggle differing backgrounds and present circumstnaces, families, budgets, and work that sometimes doesn't stop. She delivers a robust fullbodied story using fluid prose, energetic pacing and a cast of intringuing supporting characters. I found A Love Noire to be an intriging alternative to the mltitude of formulaic novels that only manage rich beautiful, but wooden characters, with little more for plot than hemming and hawing about love and sex lived in a vacum. A Love Noire is an especially refreshing departure and beautifully written. The authentitcity of its settings provides a strong foundation to support the vivid story. The varied socioeconomic and multicultural characters will engage persons who live such lives and those for whom such variety is not commonplace. Bookclubs (and anyone) who venture to read this gem will have meaty topics to discuss. An excellent debut. Definitely looking forward to her next work.

Deserving Of More Than Five Stars...

Erica Simone Turnipseed's debut novel is one of the best books I have read this year...in fact, it is one of the best pieces of fiction that I have ever read. Ms. Turnipseed's prose is simply beautiful, poetic, and captivating. She had me drawn into the world of Noire and Innocent immediately, and thanks to her careful character development, I gave a damn about them from Page One. Not too many authors today can do that so well.It is an understatement to say that Noire and Innocent's love story was real and deep. It was totally believable -- full of the passion and pain that many of us experience. I felt their joys, their heartaches as they experienced them. Ms. Turnipseed's exquisitively vivid writing made that possible. The ending, like the rest of the book, is very real. It actually made me cry!If you're looking for a real, contemporary African-American love story, then go and get a copy of "A Love Noire". I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Love for A Love Noire!

I was attracted to this book from page 1. For many and probably most readers, get us on page 1, we will finish in a day or so. This was me! I was so in tuned to both Noire and Innocent. Beyond that, I wanted to understand Arike, Jayna, Marcus and their backgrounds too. The book enlightens the reader of cultural differences, but also invites understanding into the similarities of the bourgois, regardless of continent. Erica Turnipseed has a unique and sophisticated flare for character development and art in writing - a quality that is so rare of modern authors. She was never in a hurry to say anything and yet, when it was all said, I was continuously moved. A Love Noire is a delightful first novel. This debut leaves readers excited and anxious about what Ms. Turnipseed will come up with next. It is also an excellent book club choice. Recommend it to your club!

Praise for A Love Noire

What a spectacular debut for Ms. Turnipseed! From the moment I picked up this book, I just simply couldn't put it down. The plot and themes are so intriguing, that I felt I knew Noire and Innocent personally. Turnipseed's characters are so tangible and life-like, that their personalities and complexities come forth as though emanating from a silver screen. Spanning three continents and a host of historic and cultural references from the Edisto Island, South Carolina to the Caribbean and Central America, Turnipseed takes up on an exiciting journey of love, passion and in a not-so-bad way angst. Each page brings a new surprise as subplots unfold to reveal new and interesting tidbits about the cast of variegated characters who show us what it means to be young and in love with the world as a stage of infinite possibilites.