AUDIOBOOK
About
From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.
Written in a voice that's alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.
Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book's main characters is also named City Coldson-but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan.
City's two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother's house, where he discovers the key to Baize's disappearance.
Written in a voice that's alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.
Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book's main characters is also named City Coldson-but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan.
City's two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother's house, where he discovers the key to Baize's disappearance.
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Reviews
Sometimes metafiction--shape shifting, self-referential, time bending--can seem like a party favor. While it possesses many meta elements, this satisfying audiobook is at once a comic romp, a satire of fame in the Internet Age, and a look at race--set in rural Mississippi. This is the 2021 revision of the debut novel from Laymon, whose more recent memoir, HEAVY, was much lauded. The performances a
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