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2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Shortlist
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Channeling the lyrical phantasmagoria of early Toni Morrison and the sexual and racial brutality of the 20th century east Texas, Cynthia Bond has created a moving and indelible portrait of a fallen woman... Bond traffics in extremely difficult subjects with a grace and bigheartedness that makes for an accomplished, enthralling read.
— Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle
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A beautifully wrought ghost story, a love story, a survival story...[A] wonderful debut.
— Angela Flournoy, Los Angeles Review of Books
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Reading Cynthia Bond’s Ruby, you can’t help but feel that one day this book will be considered a staple of our literature, a classic. Lush, deep, momentous, much like the people and landscape it describes, Ruby enchants not just with its powerful tale of lifelong quests and unrelenting love, but also with its exquisite language. It is a treasure of a book, one you won’t soon forget.
— Edwidge Danticat, author of Claire of the Sea Light
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Impeccably crafted… Ruby is undoubtedly the early work of a master storyteller whose literary lyricism is nothing short of pitch perfect.
— BookPage
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Bracing....Undeniable....The echoes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison are clear....A very strong first novel that blends tough realism with the appealing strangeness of a fever dream.
— Kirkus
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Ruby is a harrowing, hallucinatory novel, a love story and a ghost story about one woman’s attempt to escape the legacy of violence in a small southern town. Cynthia Bond writes with a dazzling poetry that’s part William Faulkner, part Toni Morrison, yet entirely her own. Ruby is encircled by shadows, but incandescent with light.
— Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
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From the first sentence, Cynthia Bond’s unforgettable debut novel, Ruby, took hold of me and it hasn’t let go. Cynthia Bond has written a book everyone should read, about the power of love to overcome even the darkest of histories.
— Amy Greene, author of Bloodroot
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Bond proves to be a powerful literary force, a writer whose unflinching yet lyrical prose is reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s.
— O, The Oprah Magazine
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In Ruby, Bond has created a heroine worthy of the great female protagonists of Toni Morrison…and Zora Neale Hurston… Bond’s style of writing is as magical as an East Texas sunrise.
— Dallas Morning News
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Evocative, affective and accomplished… Bond tells the story of Ruby and Ephram’s lives and their relationship with unflinching honesty and a surreal, haunting quality.
— Texas Observer
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Gorgeous… Bond is a gifted writer, powerful and nimble… [I]t’s tempting to call up Toni Morrison or Alice Walker or Ntozake Shange. It should be done more as compliment than comparison, though…Bond’s is a robustly original voice.
— Barnes and Noble Review
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Oprah recommended this book to me, and it is astounding. [Cynthia Bond] has such a majestic command of language; she catapults everyday words into rare air with lines that sear into your memory. The characters Ruby and Ephraim shimmer with vibrancy — they show the complications of pain and joy, all messily and beautifully together. A total triumph.” Ava DuVernay, director of Selma
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If you love well-written historical fiction and multifaceted grown-up characters, put Ruby at the top of your beach bag... Bond delivers multiple goods with this one.
— Essence
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Cynthia Bond creates a vibrant chorus of voices united by a common struggle… [T]he prose’s lyricism and Ruby’s interaction with the dead call to mind Beloved… While Bond’s characters may sense the inevitability of loss and loneliness, they are also driven by something else, a timid hopefulness that they may find serenity and compassion amid the ghosts who haunt them.
— The Rumpus
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Exquisite, juxtaposing horrific imagery with dreamy evocative lyricism.
— Lambda Literary
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Literary magic.
— St. Louis American
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Ruby explores the redeeming power of love in the face of horrific trauma… If the truth shall set us free, Ms. Bond shows us, in her story of grace, that love is truth.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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[A] dark and redemptive beauty... Bond’s prose is evocative of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, paying homage to the greats of Southern gothic literature.
— Library Journal (starred)
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[A] powerful, explosive novel. Bond immerses readers in a fully realized world, one scarred by virulent racism and perverted rituals but also redeemed by love.
— Booklist (starred)
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An unusual, rare and beautiful novel that is meant to be experienced as much as read.
— Shelf Awareness (starred)
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A stunning debut. Ruby is unforgettable.
— John Rechy, author of City of Night
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Cloaked in authenticity, Ruby is unlike anything else out there right now.
— Windy City Times
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“A stunning debut. Ruby is unforgettable.”
— John Rechy, New York Times bestselling author
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“Pure magic. Every line gleams with vigor and sound and beauty…This stunning debut delivers.”
— Janet Fitch, New York Times bestselling author
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“Lush, deep, momentous, much like the people and landscape it describes, Ruby enchants not just with its powerful tale of lifelong quests and unrelenting love but also with its exquisite language.”
— Edwidge Danticat, New York Times bestselling author
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“A powerful literary force reminiscent of Toni Morrison.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine
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“A moving and indelible portrait of a fallen woman…Bond traffics in extremely difficult subjects with a grace and bigheartedness that makes for an accomplished, enthralling read.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
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“A beautifully wrought ghost story, a love story, a survival story.”
— Los Angeles Review of Books
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“[A] powerful, explosive novel. Bond immerses readers in a fully realized world, one scarred by virulent racism and perverted rituals but also redeemed by love.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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“Bracing…Undeniable…The echoes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison are clear…A very strong first novel that blends tough realism with the appealing strangeness of a fever dream.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“Cynthia Bond narrates her own rich novel with a deliberate, almost sleepy pace reminiscent of the plodding tempo of life in east Texas in the 1950s…Bond employs a rich, softly rounded accent for the voice of Ruby.”
— AudioFile
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“Ruby’s story is one of pain and beauty, damnation and redemption. Cynthia Bond has written a book everyone should read, about the power of love to overcome even the darkest of histories.”
— Amy Greene, author of Bloodroot
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“Ruby is a harrowing, hallucinatory novel, a love story and a ghost story about one woman’s attempt to escape the legacy of violence in a small southern town. Cynthia Bond writes with a dazzling poetry that’s part William Faulkner, part Toni Morrison, yet entirely her own. Ruby is encircled by shadows, but incandescent with light.”
— Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena