Samantha's Reviews > The Living is Easy

Tells the story of Cleo Jericho Hudson, a sharecropper's daughter who leaves the South to seek a better life in Boston. Coming up north she lived and worked in a white woman's house , one thing she never wanted to do. There she meets, the Black banana king, Bart Judson, 21 years her junior, "whose wealth and prestige allow Cleo to become a member of Boston's early 20th century Black elite, into which one gains entry through money, light-skinned beauty, or both." As a Black woman, born into a poor southern family she didn't have many opportunities for herself, so she uses the people around her to get what she wants. Everyone from her daughter who she's growing to be "a proper Bostonian" , to the Black doctors, lawyers and, families with old money and strong names. Cleo will never go back to her lower class beginnings.

Even though she's a mother and wife, Cleo is neither loving or nurturing and her main focus is recreating her life with her three sisters, Charity, Serena & Lily, But this time, in the upper-class Boston suburb of Brookline and not the poor south,  and she isn't above lying, stealing, and manipulating everyone in her path, to get what she wants; money, class, status & her sisters!

Cleo, Cleo, Cleo. I've never read a book with a more self-centered, conniving, hateful, classist, money hungry woman like Cleo and I loved it! She's the most unlikable character I've read & I couldn't wait to see what lie she would spit out next, how she would steal money from her husband and what snobby thing she would say about the poor Black people in Boston.

"She smiled brightly at her own ability to taste untruths on her tongue and make no betraying grimace. "

Dorothy did an amazing job writing Cleo as an unlikable character who only cared about class, color and money.

The supporting characters were well thought out, from Black doctors, lawyers, writers, and each  person gave West different avenues to showcase Cleo's lust for social mobility.