In 1981, Toni Morrison, addressing the Ohio Arts Council, said, \u201cWriting to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn\u2019t been written yet, then you must write it.\u201d I must admit there are many books I have long wanted to read that have gone unwritten. And instead of trying to write those books, I\u2019ve resorted to hoping and praying that other writers might make Morrison\u2019s axiom their credo. One kind of book I\u2019ve long hoped would get written was about churches \u2014 Black ones, like the ones I grew up in and still attend \u2014 replete with all the irreverence, scandal, intrigue, warmth, and comedy I\u2019ve witnessed and imagined. Even more specifically, I\u2019ve wanted to read a book about the most under-covered members of the church landscape: pastors\u2019 wives, first ladies of their churches, who, like the First Ladies of the United States, imbue their positions with meaning and purpose. <\/p>\n
Here enters National Book Award Finalist Deesha Philyaw, with her novel, \u201cThe True Confessions of First Lady Freeman<\/a>,\u201d an initially promising but mostly unsatisfying attempt to answer that prayer. <\/p>\n From the beginning Philyaw\u2019s narrator and main character, First Lady Scharisse Freeman, strikes a confessional tone less auricular than irreverently entertaining. From her vivid descriptions of sex to a flashback scene of a sex-toy mini-conference she hosts for her peers and their pastor-husbands, most of whom get UTIs. I was initially delighted to witness Philyaw dispense with prudishness and embrace the scandalous. <\/p>\n Get Starting Point<\/p>\n A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n Sadly, this book about mess is itself a bit of a mess. Philyaw tries to weave together the stories behind First Lady Scharisse Freeman\u2019s tumultuous year, but the connective tissues fray. Among the scandals Philyaw describes are an unraveling marriage, uncertainty about Freeman\u2019s father\u2019s identity, difficulty relating to her unique peer set of other megachurch first ladies, and the trials and tribulations of competing in a beauty pageant of that same group. <\/p>\n Any one of these threads could make for a rich novel. But Philyaw chooses to follow them all, often putting these narrative threads in competition. The result is a mess of subplots with no clear winner. <\/p>\n