Linden Hills wasn’t black; it was successful. The shining surface of their careers, brass railings, and cars hurt his eyes because it only reflected the bright nothing that was inside of them.

Gloria Naylor's Lindon Hills is somehow a perfect allegory of race, gender, and sexuality within the black community and the power structures put in place to keep the status quo. The premise is simple: friends Willie and Lester—two 20-year-old black men who decide to travel through the glittering Linden Hills to scrape enough money together for the holiday season. What they find instead a community rotting from the inside out and the deeply twisted lives that are caught up in all of it in the daunting imagery of Dante's Inferno.

The novel has at times 4 simultaneous storylines running throughout: the present, involving Willie and Lester; the other presents depicting Mr. Nedeed and another with his wife trapped in the basement; and the backstories of the characters Willie and Lester interact with through their journey through Linden Hills.

I absolutely loved the characters Willie and Lester and how who interact with as they descend into Linden Hills. It almost felt a little like a mystery novel at times; the characters revealing subtle clues as to their ills before the great reveal of their "sins". We meet a gay man marrying and making his lover be his best man to get a foot into Linden Hills, a man mourning his conveniently dead wife before he marries another, an alcoholic, burned out priest, a woman who loses all sense of meaning after leaving the warm home of her grandmother and "making it", and a creepy historian who documents every happening of Linden Hills—including the acts of our own Willie and Lester from the past few days without anyone knowing. I kept wondering each chapter who'd I'd see, what cast of characters I'd meet and chip away word by word to see who they really were.

A vivid addition to the novel was the southern gothic elements of that comes alive around Willa Nedeed in her basement. There's major Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre vibes in the calling across the hills of the trapped woman in the basement, the almost supernatural powers of Mr. Nedeed and his control over his own little section of hell. It's full of unnatural shadows and nightmares, dead children shrouded in lace and stiffening by the hour and fires (perhaps) purifying it all. It was exciting. It was something classic in an understandable, modern setting. It was amazing.

And so I really appreciated and enjoyed the ease that the book read in and the pervasiveness of the themes and symbols. For some, it may seem heavy-handed, but I think masking that in a novel such as this is would have been incredibly disingenuous and showed quite apparently the genius of Gloria Naylor. Her work in this story with the interwoven themes of and symbols of black and white, father and son, faces and identity, and material goods and their emptiness was beautiful and complex without being convoluted. It's the perfect allegory for the question of "making it" in a white man's world and a clear thesis against the philosophies of Booker T. Washington. It'll make you think, and I believe that's exactly what Naylor wanted.

"Being white was the furthest thing from his mind, since he spent every waking moment trying to be no color at all." ( )

Gloria Naylor passed from the literary family at far too young an age. While The Women of Brewster’s Place and Mama Day are better works, Linden Hills offers a look at the competitive natures of this wealthy black neighborhood, as well as its secrets and narcissism. What is so good about Naylor’s work is the way she controls the magical and the realistic, taking a very serious look at human nature.
Reviewed in Le Coeur de l'Artiste: http://www.djadamson.com/le-coeur-de-lartiste ( )

I read this in college 20 years ago. It's been a long time, but certain passages in this book still come to mind, so while I'm not sure if/when I'll reread it, I'm confident it's worth the four stars. ( )

Linden Hills is one of the creepiest books I've read, and certainly one of the most enjoyable. Gloria Naylor is a beautiful writer, hands down. Although her language is full of symbol and metaphor, she is still easily accesssable. I read Linden Hills after reading The Women of Brewster Place and expected something similar: stories of different people's stuggles with racism and class. Though I loved WBP, Linden Hills has an extra element, a feeling of being sucked down into disparity. The characters are all looking tho climb the social ladder of the bourgeois black comminuty. However, truly they seek a descent, both literally (the most coveted addresses are at the bottom of the hills) and figuratively (losing themselves and their souls to advance socially). I think this is a great book not only for its lessons about society, appearece and status, but also beacsue Naylor is a gifted storyteller. I finished this book within a day of starting it because I couldn't put it down. I'm dissapointed that Naylor isn't as highly recognized as some other contemorary authors: she definitely deserves a place beside Morrison for her beauty of language and Steinbeck for her examination of the human spirit in a crushing society. Bravo! ( )

Not much of an idea? It was a wonderful idea - colossal. Anything that put the music back in Ruth's voice as she spoke to him. He would go into Linden Hills and work his butt off. Then he'd take the money and buy her and Norm a great gift — maybe even a turkey, too. Ruth wanted him to go into Linden Hills and he would go. He was just sorry that she hadn’t asked him to go into hell for her so he could really prove himself.

Best friends and fellow poets Willie Mason and Lester Tilson, work their way down through the exclusive, and exclusively African-American, suburb of Linden Hills, doing odd jobs to earn money to buy Christmas presents. But the streets of Linden Hills correspond to the circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, and Willie (who lives in the down-market area of Putney Wayne) and Lester (whose family have lived on First Crescent in Linden Hills since the very beginning) are this book's Dante and Virgil.

Lester and Willie's friends Ruth (who during her first marriage lived on Fifth Crescent) and Norman, live in a barely furnished apartment in Putney Wayne and are happy with their lot, and unlike most of their neighbours, they don't aspire to a house in Linden Hills. Those who have already made it into Linden Hills hope to move further down the hill, and ultimately onto Tupelo Drive, just above the moated house belonging to undertaker and property developer Luther Nedeed, whose ancestor bought the hillside back before the American Civil War.

Apart from the poets and their friends, the person I had most sympathy for was Reverend Hollis, a resident of Fifth Crescent who employed Willie and Lester to help him get ready for the children's Christmas party at his church. Reverend Hollis feels his faith seeping away, quashed by the emptiness emanating from his large, wealthy and status-conscious congregation, so every year he throws a party for the children of Putney Wayne at his own expense, in the hope of encouraging some poorer people who are full of God's spirit to start attending his church. The oddest person in the book doesn't even live in Linden Hills. Maxwell Smyth has risen to a high position in General Motors despite the handicap of being black. He controls every aspect of his life to the nth degree, including his dietary and toilet habits, dedicating his life to being so perfect that no-one can doubt that he is the best man for whatever job is on offer. ( )