Supporting the Sky

By Patricia Browning Griffith

A touchingly humorous new novel by the author of The World Around Midnight. When single mom Rosemary Kenny meets an intriguing and sophisticated foreign journalist from Prague, she contemplates the possibility of what she terms un-American sex. At the same time, she worries about her tempestuous 16-year-old daughter's hidden romantic life.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399141286
• ISBN13: 9780399141287
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.0" x 5.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Urban Romances VS. Mothering

Supporting The Sky is funny, sad, bleak, hopeful, and graceful, all wrapped up in one book. Reading it is much like riding a roller coaster. You can see the big dips, hills and hair pin turns long before you get to them. However, that doesn't reduce the surprises or thrills of the ride. Griffith uses extensive foreshadowing. Yet leaves pleanty of room for guessing the who, when and where. Although, the story plays out around a few key violent crimes and their aftermath, the true focal point is the complexity of a mother - teenage daughter relationship.

An Exhausting Slice of DC

The trials and tribulations of the well-meaning, liberal single mother of a wild teenage daughter are on full display in this exhausting novel set in early 1990s Washington, DC. While Griffith does an admirable job of showing the lives of everyday middle-class Washington residents, the main thrust of the story is to explore the difficulties of single motherhood and middle-aged romance. When Rosemary's daughter brings home a black "rapper" boyfriend, she triggers an overload of white guilt to complement Rosemary's already ample supply of liberal guilt. The constant mother/daughter skirmishes are partly a function of teenagerdom, but are also obviously linked to the unspoken divorce. As Rosemary struggles to reach her daughter, she also wrestles with her empty job and tentative romance with a Czech journalist. Her mid-level job at a small public relations firm is a quintessential (white) Washington job, and while her crush/friendship with a black co-worker hits all the right notes, a subplot in which she organizes an exhibit for a Caribbean painter degenerates into farce. The romance is nicely rendered, showing all the awkwardness, need, and tenderness one would expect from such a relationship.The climax unfolds in an unnecessarily dramatic event, one that is rather obviously foreshadowed throughout. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the book are the presence of too many dramatic incidents: the events of the climax, an assassination attempt on a prime minister, the (inevitable) drive-by murder of a young black man, a minister's breakdown on the pulpit, a false murder charge, and a running away from home. While one is totally sympathetic with the put-upon Rosemary, after a while it gets hard stomach her picking up after her ungrateful daughter, her caving in on all arguments, and her general lack of confidence. These are true qualities one sees around us all the time, but somehow reading about them for 300 pages gets exhausting.Though not quite on the level of Edward Jones's Lost in the City, the book is a good fictional account of the Washington, DC in which people live, as opposed to the corridors of power. There are small details here and there that will ring false to native Washingtonians however. Trashcans are called "dumpsters" instead of "supercans" as they are known to most. A taxi driver is described as getting out of his cab to yell at a bike messenger-this never happens, they always stay in the cab because they are afraid of retaliation. The Czech repeatedly parks his car the wrong way, saying that in Mexico the parking is so relaxed. It only takes an hour driving around to see that parking is different in the U.S., and he's not stupid. These minor distractions aside, it's a well-written book, if somewhat exhausting.