The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

The Turner House 
by Angela Flournoy
Narrator by Adenrele Ojo
Fiction
Unabridged Audiobook 12+ Hours
BUY ♦ GR

A novel centered on the journey of the Turner family and its thirteen siblings, particularly the eldest and youngest, as they face the ghosts of their pasts—both an actual haint and the specter of addiction—the imminent loss of their mother, and the necessary abandonment of their family home in struggling Detroit.

            

I was under the impression that this was a book about a haunted house. At about the halfway mark I finally realized that I was quite mistaken.

Yes, it took me that long to figure things out.

This is a book about suburban decay, family dynamics and little life dramas. It’s well written but it’s not a ghost story, not even close and that’s entirely my own fault. I guess I saw the word “haint” somewhere in the description and I saw nothing else. But because I had purchased the audio during a sale I was determined to finish it. Am I glad I did? Not particularly.

Viola and Francis raised 13 children and somehow managed to survive it with their sanity intact. I shudder just thinking about it. Anyway, Viola is now widowed, her health is ailing and her grown children are faced with dealing with the family home that’s been mortgaged to the hilt and is now worth next to nothing because the neighborhood has gone to crap, along with the economy.

This book does not focus on all thirteen siblings (thank the lord, I never would have been able to keep track) but instead tells the struggles of the oldest, ChaCha, who feels the weight of the world on his shoulders and has the specter of a haint hanging over him, the youngest, Lelah, who has a gambling addiction and Viola and Francis by flashing back to the past.

It’s a well written story but honestly I never felt attached to any of these people. They are real and real flawed, I’ll give you that, but I didn’t like any of them all that much and thus reading about their struggles (many of their own making) got a bit tiresome in the end. The book also never resolves the main issue of The Turner House and that bugged me.

Basically it is a tale of family dramas but unfortunately none of them were very juicy or devastating, if you ask me.

The narrator was decent but at times several of her characters sounded too similar and I got a little confused as to who was speaking.

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