Modest Sister Souljah compares her work to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, noting that both involve gang fights. However, R&J is a story of fierce passions and a love that demands the ultimate self sacrifice. Coldest Winter centers on one of the most passionless, self absorbed characters I've ever encountered in fiction.

Oh, Winter Santiaga gets plenty mad with people, and has plenty of sex, but she is well-named: there is nothing but cold and ice in her soul. As she gradually loses her wealth, social position and friends, I thought this would turn into a contemporary version of those great riches to rags novels like Gone with The Wind or Sense and Sensibility: spoiled heroine learns a lesson, takes matters into her own hands and saves the family with her smarts. Not so much. First off, although Winter is constantly described as "smart" by other characters, she continues to make one stupid decision after another. Her critical flaw is her inability to make sound judgements about character; due to the shallowness of her upbringing she evaluates potential friends and lovers based on looks, money and what they can do for her. Not surprisingly they never fail to let her down, (as she does them).

Yet what most bothers me about Winter is that she never evinces the slightest concern for her family members. At the start of the novel she is living happily with her beloved airhead of a mother and her 3 younger sisters; once things go south and Winter is on her own she barely spares a thought for any of them. As her mother descends into crack addiction and her sisters are scattered to foster homes, Winter goes about her business , never making the slightest attempt to help them and in fact shutting the door on her desperate mother. It's hard to feel any sympathy for such a heartless character.

Of course this is meant to be a cautionary tale, and wise Sister Souljah (who is part of the narrative in a device that at first seems clever but eventually becomes irksome) delivers the occasional sermonette on character, black unity, womanhood. blah blah. Yup, boring as hell and I can't blame Winter for skipping out on them. Yet here's another tip Souljah could learn from Shakespeare: a character is only tragic if there is enough good in her to make the audience root for her even when she does terrible things. That's why we can sort of like Macbeth or Richard III: they're villains but we feel for them, we identify a bit with them. When they fall, a piece of us goes with them. At Winter's fall, all I felt was relief that this whole sordid episode was over.

The Coldest Winter Ever - Likewise Book Reviews

30 Reviews