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Temple of My Familiar
Temple of My Familiar
Author: Alice Walker
Nothing in Walker's extraordinary novel is fixed. Time and place range from precolonial Africa to post-slavery North Carolina to modern-day San Francisco; and the characters themselves change and evolve as their stories are told, their myriad histories revealed. Most often present are Miss Lissie, an old woman with a fascinating host of form...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780151885350
ISBN-10: 0151885354
Publication Date: 1989
Rating:
  • Currently 4.5/5 Stars.
 1

4.5 stars, based on 1 rating
Publisher: Harcourt
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

mountainreader avatar reviewed Temple of My Familiar on + 113 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This book was a little hard to stick with at times, only because the writing was so different than anything I have ever experienced. After reading it though the book was such a blessing to me and changed the way I think about life. The writing was absolutely beautiful and brought tears to my eyes at times. A very beautiful book!
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reviewed Temple of My Familiar on + 628 more book reviews
I loved The Color Purple but have not been able to struggle through any of the other of her books I have tried to read, including this one. It's like she's trying to cover the whole black experience over hundreds of years, plus lives older than that. I read 140 pgs in this effort but will not try her books again.
SutterTom avatar reviewed Temple of My Familiar on + 191 more book reviews
This book, filled with the author's unique combination of magic and reality, is a sweeping yet intimate novel about people who are tormented by the world's contradictions--black vs. white, man vs. woman, sexual freedom vs. sexual slavery, and past vs. present. Transcending the conventions of time and place, Walker's novel moves from contemporary America, England, and Africa to unfamiliar primal worlds, where women, men, and animals socialize in surprising ways.
reviewed Temple of My Familiar on + 16 more book reviews
a great book
reviewed Temple of My Familiar on + 159 more book reviews
''The Temple of My Familiar'' again bears a message from Africa, but this time in a far more determined manner. The message reaches us via Miss Lissie, an ancient goddess who has been incarnated hundreds of times, usually as a woman, sometimes as a man, once even as a lion. Less a character than a narrative device, Lissie enables Alice Walker to range back in time to the beginnings of (wo)man.


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