The Professor's Daughter: A Novel
Starred Review.  A thoughtful, satisfying meditation on race and family history, Raboteau's novel is that rare debut by a young author that stands out not for its stylistic swagger or precocity, but for its simple grace and absolute wisdom. The title character, Emma Boudreaux, and her "twin" brother, Bernie, are the products of an interracial marriage and an unconventional household. But while Bernie embraces his blackness, Emma is less sure about who she is; still, she chooses to defer to her brother and their shared "skin." As an adolescent she only vaguely grasps the mysterious legacy of her black father, who went from an impoverished, segregated Mississippi childhood-his own father having been publicly lynched-to an esteemed academic career at Princeton University. That her father is often absent from family life only deepens Emma's connection with her brother. But when Bernie falls into a coma after a freak accident, Emma, now a freshman at Yale, is forced to reevaluate her identity. With shifting points of view, the novel weaves together unexpected fragments, like a paper Emma "wrote" for a post-colonial African novel class and her comatose brother's lucid dreams. Drawing from the traditions of African storytelling, the novel maps a mythically rich terrain without ever leaving the confines of American realism. Raboteau, who has already won awards for her fiction, has an assured voice that illuminates pain as acutely as love, and this book flaunts her exceptional storytelling talents.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.