Razorblade
Tears, by S. A. Cosby
S. A. Cosby has done it again: proven he is no One-Hit-Wonder with his second brutal, stunning novel about Black life south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He’s here to tell you that it’s still less-than-satisfactory, not to say downright dangerous for a Black man to try to carve a new, different life for himself when he finishes a five-year jail term, then tries to rehabilitate himself – which Ike Randolf does, starting a landscaping business with a fair measure of success. But there is still suspicion aplenty as to how that Nigger is driving his Black Ass around in such an expensive truck, when all the Good Ole Boys are not so lucky.
Whatever. Ike is
glad to be back home with his family, even though his reporter son Isiah is an
enormous disappointment to him, having come out as gay recently, and even
marrying his boyfriend Derek, a chef, and a white boy, too. Ike is full of rage whenever he thinks of his
boy, so he tries not to think of him at all – until Isiah and his husband are
brutally murdered outside a restaurant, pumped full of so many bullets that
their faces are unrecognisable. And it’s
not because they were gay this time, though God knows, crimes against gays are
right up there with crimes against Blacks, but because Isiah had been given damaging
information about someone prominent that he was going to publish in the
newspaper for which he worked. They were
marked men.
To add terrible insult to unbearable injury, Ike hears
from the Police that they are making no progress with the crime because the
boys’ friends refuse to speak to them;
it’s impossible to get the time of day out of them, let alone any
information, so they are declaring the case ‘inactive’. Just another example in Ike’s eyes of yet
more discrimination, so he and Buddy Lee, father of Isiah’s husband decide to
team up and see what they can find out themselves, for they want vengeance for
their sons – need vengeance, as a sop
to all the times they refused to accept what their boys were, all the memories
of their intolerance and angry rejection, now leaving them with the saddest
words in the world: ‘If Only’.
Mr Cosby has shocks galore here (not to mention some wild
metaphors) in store for the reader; his
prose is savage and his characters brilliant and unforgettable. Blood flows freely through the second half of
the book, but he also asks the big, gnarly questions about all the ‘isms’ and
‘phobias’ that must keep on being
asked, especially by a writer of his calibre.
I hope his third novel isn’t far off. SIX STARS!
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