A Love Noire.

by Erica Simone Turnipseed Amistad, July 2003 $19.95, ISBN 0-060-53679-9

When a novel receives as much hype as Erica Simone Turnipseed's A Love Noire, critics tend to expect very little from the finished product, but any such conclusions here are false. This book of well-intentioned lovers exceeds its overblown marketing campaign.

Noire, a lovely Ph.D student, meets Innocent, an investment banker from Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, in a bookstore. Sparks fly, pushing both people to reconsider their former assumptions about their histories and cultures. This odd couple, caught up in the turbulence of love and passion, try to find their way toward a love that will nourish them and not taint their souls.

It is not only the splendid writing of Turnipseed, a writer and director of development at The Twenty-First Century Foundation, that elevates this novel of Gen-X love, but also the maturity and insight she shows on each page. Noire and her amorous friend, Jayna, live in a world populated by women who view men as conquests and trophies, but who refuse to settle for anything less than their due. They are, indeed, women who understand their power and presence, while they tread with strength and grace through the minefield of dating, quick promises and even quicker couplings.

The book moves from the cosmopolitan trappings of New York City to exotic locales, such as New Orleans, Paris and Abidjan. As it does so, the author paints a picture of a generation of African American and foreign expatriates who know that their futures are not to be squandered or discarded in a moment's folly or emotional recklessness.

With Noire and Innocent, theirs is a love that grows from a sudden spark to a large flame with all of the miscues one expects from a surge of deepening affection. What keeps them and their desires to bond off-balance is their differences, cultural and otherwise, and friends who do not understand the fickle yet potent geography of young love.

Innocent, with his expatriate African ties, is often thrown for a loop by Noire's frontal assault on his heart. He can manage the carnal atmosphere of his "brothers" at a pick-up bar, prowling after work, but he cannot understand why his American lover sends a sizzling e-mail to his job where all electronic communication is carefully screened and monitored. The male thuggery voiced by his sidekicks--Marcus, Jordan and Khalib--is something he tolerates but knows it has very little place in his heart.

While Innocent is attracted to Noire, he regards her as "a favorite food to which he is allergic, too good to avoid but with side effects." Still, he takes the bait, submits and follows the pulse of his heart into a relationship that will force him to reassess himself, his values, and his notions of gender, class and love. A similar fate also awaits Noire as she attempts to come to grips with feelings beyond any she has known.

Turnipseed's narrative is powerful, vital and totally entertaining. Her characters are etched with deep feeling, insight and revelations. This novel is one of the finer ones to emerge in this fledgling season and offers hope that a new class of black fiction will take root in the years ahead. A Love Noire is a thoroughly engaging, provocative literary debut.

--Robert Fleming is a writer and a frequent contributor to BIBR.