Whitegirl

by Kate Manning

Book Overview

I was not always a white girl. I used to be just Charlotte. A person named Charlotte Halsey. But when I met Milo, when I fell in love with him, I became White, like a lit light bulb is white. In the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385332874
• ISBN13: 9780385332873
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Dial Press
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Pulls you in like a fish on a hook

This book is about two people who fall in love. Even though race is a predominant subject throught the story, essentially, it is about Milo and Charlotte. When we first meet Charlotte, she is a young girl, wanting to break free from her parents rigid religious fundamentalism. She goes to college and meets her 'expected' all-American boyfriend, Jack. Jack is on the ski team along with another member of the team, Milo. Milo of course is black. Fast forward to years later and Charlotte is super-model. She seems to give people the impression that she is an air-head, but because the book is written from her perspective, I felt that it was just an act. Milo is an extremely famous Olympiad gold medalist who is more famous than Charlotte. For the sake of space, I'll just say they date, they fall in love, they have incidents with other people who make race an issue. What I like about this book is that the race issues are all external to their relationship. While they see one another as Milo & Charlotte, everyone else, sees them as the black and white people. When Charlotte tells her best friend about problems in her marriage, her best friend blames it on race. The blacks are no better, Milo's agent calls Charlotte, Pink, and makes jokes at her expense. I wonder where the writer did her research because I know what it is like to date interracially and the nightclub scene where they go to a club and are harrassed by two women smacks of reality. The end of this book is what makes it go from good to great. I raced to see who had tried to kill Charlotte. The ending didn't disappoint me, and allows the reader to form their own opinions. In fact, depending on your opinions, it gives food for thought.

From One Who Has Been There

First, ignore the comments from other reviewers about the parallels between this story and the OJ-Nicole Brown Simpson case. The person who wrote this book is too smart to think that a reader would fall for anything so transparent, dated and shabby.Yes, this book is about a white woman and a black man. But it is really about two people whose inner lives and outward circumstances are in conflict. (By the way, that has been a fine premise for any number of great books.) These two people fall in love, drawn together by their similarities, and then can't escape their irrevocable differences.Charlotte Halsey grows up among conservative, religious Californians, and by her teens, she knows she wants no part of that life, so she lights out for the territories, which means going East to college. Milo Robicheaux is raised in an upper-middle-class black family in New England. As a gifted black man with sophisticated parents, he is expected to be anything but a world-class athlete. Milo and Charlotte meet in college, do not connect, drift apart, and then re-connect in New York City, setting into motion the events that make the book memorable.Charlotte is the center of this book; her psyche dominates the narrative. She is a beautiful, blond and outwardly very white. But she is rebellious, rambunctious, hard-drinking and, unlike most supermodels (which she turns out to be), anything but pouty and narcissistic. She is also wise, self-sufficient and athletic, in and out of the bedroom.Milo is single-minded and driven to succeed, which he does as a skier and actor. He also is well-trained by his parents, who have schooled him in the art of succeeding in a white world, without becoming a pawn. Milo's head is turned, however, by the accusations from New York City's elite black community that being a prominent black in America and being apolitical, is a cop-out.The story of Charlotte and Milo's courtship, wedding and marriage is told with crisp details that are at the same time touching and ominous. Even though the author lets you know at the beginning of the book that Charlotte nearly loses her life at the hands of an unknown intruder, this fact is only one of many that sustain this book. Whitegirl is for anyone who has lived and loved, and whose eyes are open to the complexities of race in America.

One Great Read

A terrific page-turner. You simply won't be able to put it down. This is a beautiful, complicated love story between two beautiful, complicated people, Milo the black Olympic skier and Charlotte the gorgeous blonde model, whose lives are even more complicated by the explosive racial politics in which any black-white marriage in this country has to survive. Or not. Manning's novel is frequently just plain funny -- she's a very witty writer -- but it's deft as well. The tale is conveyed by a narrator whose intellectual capacities are, well, limited (she's a blonde model, after all), and that's rather tricky. Manning succeeds in that difficult writerly endeavor. She also succeeds in navigating the treacherous shoals of race in America -- and shows how, with even the best intentions, her protagonists get shipwrecked there. A lovely and important book.

Whitegirl Is Arresting Exploration of Race in America

I'm sure many will be tempted to reduce Whitegirl to a portrait of an interracial celebrity marriage, a flashy re-tooling of the OJ saga or even a modernized spin on the story of Othello. It exploits these references to be sure; but the novel is most importantly a chilling exploration of race in America. It presents an achingly intimate picture of the rise and violent dissolution of a marriage between Charlotte Halsey, a beautiful white model, and Milo Robicheaux, a black champion skier-sportscaster-actor. Along the way, Whitegirl examines America's schizoid attitude toward race: how celebrity nullifies blackness and affords dizzying access; how beauty trumps politics as a matter of course; and, most provocatively, how racial blending, while socially "accepted", remains a treacherous and in this case violent course. The novel is highly visual, whether it's Charlotte's discomfit over the segregation of her wedding guests (black to the left, white to the right), or her awkward fashion spread in front of a housing project about to implode. The novel ignites a number of questions, some explorative, many downright dangerous. Manning's protagonist is a fully drawn woman: self-indulgent, vain, strong, resigned, passionate, clueless, loving, upended. Her journey reflects America's roller-coaster relationship with celebrity, sex, race, violence, and power. A great read that asks unflinching questions.

A Remarkable Debut

I was completely hooked from the first page of Kate Manning's novel. The voice of the the "white girl" who is the narrator is one of the most memorably original I've come across: colloquial yet poetic; naive yet intelligent; vulnerable yet determined. I admire Manning's bravery and skill in tackling head-on not only the challenging subject of race but also the tyranny of beauty in our culture. Somehow she has made a totally plausible "hero" of a type that has probably never existed in real life: a black Olympic skier from New Hampshire. She also has perfect pitch on college romance, the New York bar scene, competitive skiing, and Christian piety. The prose is artistic but muscular, and the plot is driven by a poignant combination of tragedy and innocence. This is a brilliant book.