When Abdul finally starts to come into his own as part of a company of dancers, most of them hold him at a distance. The overwhelmed social worker spends much of her page time apologizing for her own futility. The teachers here turn out to be serial molesters. At times, it seems the mission of “The Kid” is to punish those readers of “Push” who found even the faintest glimmer of hope in Precious’ journey, as if Sapphire were daring anyone to make this novel into a Hollywood story with lovely celebrities playing well-intentioned social workers and tough but tender teachers who impart the redeeming value of the written word. One wonders if the novel’s uncomfortably literal rendition of “tragedy porn” - through which someone derives selfish pleasure while witnessing or trying to ignore a narrative of suffering - is a calculated indictment of a certain type of reader. But my dreams were not lies before my mother died, or, except, maybe that time just before Mommy died was bad dreams.” When I close my eyes my dreams belong to the boogeyman, the Devil. I’m a warrior riding across the plains, in my dreams we drive the Europeans back into the ocean, in my dreams sometimes I am black, blacker than I am now, the blackest black man, Hannibal riding an elephant over the Alps, the ruler of a kingdom of a land where my father’s picture is like George Washington’s on the dollar bill, in my dreams I have not been beat. “In my dreams I’m not black,” the young Abdul says, “and if I am I’m only half black and an Indian. His story is told in a complicated first-person, stream-of-consciousness style, made trickier by the fact that the voice must shape-shift, taking on new moods and identities every time Abdul does. Precious has died of AIDS, and that loss - of maternal affection, of any shred of normalcy, of childhood itself - haunts Abdul as he is bounced from bad living situation to worse.

At its best, “The Kid” captures the grueling heartbreak of trying to love anything when the world doesn’t love you enough, of trying to summon desire or affection in the absence of any healthy context for either one.Īs the book opens, Abdul is 9 years old.

Fifteen years after the heralded publication of her first novel, “Push” - the basis for the 2009 film “Precious” - Sapphire has written a new novel, “The Kid,” which traces the life of Precious’ second child, Abdul.

Push book precious