Ta-Nehisi Coates lands in Seattle on October 20. PHOTO BY ANNA WEBBER / GETTY IMAGES
The great black American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates turns out not to be a great novelist. And this isn’t a bad thing. It happens. We can’t be good at everything.
Coates, the celebrated essayist who is often compared to James Baldwin, clearly thought that, like Baldwin, he could write fiction as gripping as his nonfiction. He tried, he gave it a decade of his life, but he definitely failed.
Yes, the novel, The Water Dancer, was picked by Oprah Winfrey for her much-prized book club, and it has received rave reviews in a number of places, but the truth is it’s pretty much a mess from beginning to end.
