If Beale Street Could Talk review by Josh

If Beale St Could Talk is told from the perspective of an 18 year old, Tish, who finds out that she’s pregnant a few days after her fiancé is arrested and charged (falsely) with rape. The book is about her family’s efforts to free him, and the barriers they run into at every turn.

Stories like this make me a feel a sense of claustrophobia - walls closing in. Her goal, to free her fiancé, isn’t really within her power to achieve.

It reminds me of the old joke about the gambler who goes to play cards every night and keeps losing. After a while someone says “you know the game is rigged, you’re never going to win.” The gambler says “yeah, I know, but it’s the only game in town.”

Tish and the other characters play their cards as well as they can, and as the reader you’re rooting for her to win. But the deck is obviously stacked.

This kind of scenario might be described as Kafkaesque. But, Baldwin is a realist and the constraints Tish faces - due to her sex, race, age, and income among other things are all entirely realistic. She’s not confused about what’s happening - she understands the situation and what the police and DA are doing perfectly well, there’s just very little she can do to change it.

—— On a more or less unrelated note, Baldwin has some of the best subtly bitchy descriptions I’ve ever read.

E.g.

“She was dressed in something which looked very stylish until you looked at it.”

Or

“A heavy man, smelling of hot sauce and toothpaste, breathed heavily into my face. It wasn’t his fault that he had to breathe, or that my face was there.”

Or (less subtle)

“some men wash their cars, on Sundays, more carefully than they wash their foreskins.”