The Temple of My Familiar
$30.00
Book 2 of 3: The Color Purple Collection
by Alice Walker
The Temple of My Familiar is an ambitious and multi-narrative novel containing the interleaved stories of Arveyda, a musician in search of his past; Carlotta, his Latin American wife who lives in exile from hers; Suwelo, a black professor of American History who realizes that his generation of men have failed women; Fanny, his ex-wife about to meet her father for the first time; and Lissie, a vibrant creature with a thousand pasts.
“Nothing in Walker’s extraordinary new novel is fixed. Time and place range from precolonial Africa to post-slavery North Carolina to modern-day San Francisco; and the characters themselves change and evolve as their stories are told, their myriad histories revealed. Most often present are Miss Lissie, an old woman with a fascinating host of former lives; her companion, the gentle Mr. Hal; Arveyda, a soul-searching musician; his wife Carlotta, who was born in the South American jungle; Fanny, a young woman who has a tendency to fall in love with spirits; and her husband Suwelo, who tries hard but simply does not understand her. Out of the telling of their stories emerges a glorious and iridescent fabric, a strand connecting all their lives and former lives and seeming to pull all of existence into its folds. Walker’s characters are magnetic, even with their all-to-human flaws and stumblings; they seem to contain the world, and to do it justice.” —Library Journal
Hardcover | 416 pages | Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1st edition | 1989
Our vintage books have been in the hands of others for decades. The books are intact and ready to read, but they come in various conditions and may have the patina of a well-loved book which can include covers that have minor creases or tears, folded pages, or foxed pages. Some are like new.
