The Turner House by Angela Flournoy: A Detroit family saga

I was attracted to Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House by its Detroit setting, helped along by puffs from the likes of T C Boyle, Tayari Jones and Elizabeth McCracken. Set over five weeks in the spring of 2008, it follows the eponymous family as they try to decide what to do with the dilapidated house on Yarrow Street which was once their family home.

Each child became a consecration, further commitment to stay put and be happy. And they often were.

Francis and Violet Turner married in 1944 when she was a teenager, quickly pregnant with their first son. Francis leaves for Detroit, fired up by the idea of becoming a preacher and armed with a letter of introduction while Violet waits at home, gradually losing hope of her husband calling for her to join him. Decades later, with Francis long dead, Violet is living with her her firstborn. Cha-Cha and his wife are the mainstay of the family, Tina organising the annual party which sees the thirteen Turner siblings and their progeny gather around their matriarch. The lead up to this one will be eventful, not least the back and forth over what to do with the family home, one of the few still standing on Yarrow Street, apparently worth a fraction of the mortgage owed. Everyone has their own idea but Lelah, the youngest, and Cha-Cha, both find themselves dealing with their own personal crises over the weeks before the clan gathers, their mother at its centre for what will likely be the last time.

Sooner or later you’re gonna realise that just cause a Turner thinks a thing is normal, doesn’t mean it is.

Essentially a family saga, Flournoy’s novel concentrates on three Turners, lightly weaving their parents’ story through the five weeks building up to the party. Cha-Cha is buckling under the self-imposed burden of responsibility for the entire family, exacerbated by an accident which sees him in therapy; Lelah’s gambling has got her evicted again, resorting to living secretly in the Yarrow Street house, too proud to ask for help, and Troy, resentful of Cha-Cha’s insistence on being in charge, has come up with his own dodgy solution to the house problem, despite being a police officer. Flournoy deftly juggles these four strands, occasionally bringing in several of the remaining ten siblings, some of whom felt somewhat two-dimensional made up for by the humour and affection with which her smartly drawn main characters are portrayed. The desperate decline of Detroit, from thriving Motor City to wrecked, dangerous neighbourhoods, provides a backdrop to the Turners’ story. Set before the financial crisis bit hard, Flournoy’s engrossing novel left me wondering what would become of the family.

Verve Books: London 9780857309587 352 pages Paperback (Read via NetGalley)