Arlene McKanic

Midnight, the eponymous protagonist of Sister Souljah's fascinating, long-awaited novel – no doubt the first of at least two parts, as it begins in mystery and ends in a cliffhanger – is a seriously put-upon young man. A devout Sudanese Muslim, his devotion to his beautiful and talented mother and adorable little sister is absolute. He works in New York's Chinatown to help support them, and studies martial arts under a Pat Morita – esque sensei to protect them. His religion forbids drinking, drugs and premarital sex, though these vices seem part of the air he breathes. When he falls in love with Akemi, a brilliant Japanese artist who speaks not a word of English, he and his family feel that the only honorable thing for him to do is marry her. He's also, by the way, an efficient and cold – blooded killer. But it's a testament to Souljah's talent as a writer that we like and admire Midnight, even if we don't share or understand his values. Despite those unfortunate murders, he's the farthest thing from a psychopath. He loves passionately and unshakably. He is incorruptible, unfailingly respectful to his elders and hardworking in a way that's astonishing to his American – born friends.

Souljah not only brings Midnight to vibrant, complex life, but also makes her minor characters distinct and believable. We get to know the boys Midnight runs with, the brazen neighborhood girls he runs away from, the Chinese fishmonger he works for, the jovial bookseller who engages him in occasional games of chess. We identify with Midnight's patient, loving mother even as we're appalled that she lets her teenaged son get married in America, where he's not old enough to vote, drive or rent an apartment.

Souljah's first novel, The Coldest Winter Ever, is credited with starting the urban lit genre and has been selling steadily since its publication in 1999. In this second novel she continues to portray the realities of urban life. Midnight is remarkable for the empathy, insight and compassion it brings to its myriad characters and their intersecting worlds.

Arlene McKanic writes from Blair, South Carolina.

The love of movies links three generations of African-American women in former Essence editor Martha Southgate's latest novel, Third Girl from the Left.

The title refers to Angela, daughter of Mildred and mother of Tamara, who had a brief and somewhat shabby career as an extra in '70s blaxploitation films she always seemed to be the third girl from the left in this or that scene. Angie's love of film was first nurtured by Mildred, who as a child witnessed the murder of her own mother during the 1921 Tulsa race riots. Mildred's frequent trips to the local cinema help her escape the dullness of her middle-class life and the pressure of childhood memories. Once Angie escapes stultifying Tulsa for Hollywood, she becomes estranged from her family, who are shocked by the films she makes. Her relationship with her daughter Tamara, conceived during an affair with a fellow actor, can also be fractious. Tamara makes movies herself; she's a second camera assistant on "Law and Order" until a sense of duty and curiosity takes her to Oklahoma to record Mildred's last illness. Thus, movies for these women are a form not only of escape but empowerment and, finally, healing.

Southgate's writing is lean, matter-of-fact and brightened with tart humor, though she doesn't shy from raunchiness where it's necessary—the world through which Angie moves is a rough one. The interweaving of personal and cultural history is subtle and unexpectedly satisfying. We are taken from Mildred's lush '50s and '60s films to Angie's big scene in Coffy to Tamara and the progress that allows her to at least attend film school and be an assistant on a hit show, even though white male directors still get the plum jobs. Third Girl from the Left is a wise and compassionate book.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Tayari Jones' first novel, Leaving Atlanta, dealt with the sorrow and horror of the Atlanta Child Murders of the early 1980s. Her new novel, The Untelling, though focused on one family, tells a story no less wrung with grief.

When Ariadne Jackson was around 10 years old, her father and younger sister Genevieve were killed in a car crash that Jones describes with quiet, matter-of-fact horror. Ariadne, her mother Eloise and older sister Hermione survived, physically unscarred, but psychologically mangled. The damage sometimes manifests in roundabout ways. Eloise's quirkiness she chose her daughters' names can turn mean; she can bake BB's into cornbread, or capriciously lock her daughters out of the house. Hermione has married her father's best friend and her relations with her stepdaughter, a woman who's older than she is, are icy. Ariadne's father died when she was on the brink of puberty, and it seems that her very womanhood has been compromised. This problem has especially sad consequences for her relationship with her boyfriend Dwayne. Also, like her mother (who was holding baby Genevieve on her lap during the car accident), Ariadne carries an unwarranted but overpowering burden of guilt: she blames herself for refusing to comfort her father during his last moments of life.

Jones surrounds these unhappy women with other well-drawn characters. There's Cynthia, the homeless crack addict; Rochelle, Ariadne's roommate whom Ariadne envies for her smooth relationship with her fiancé; and Keisha, the sweet but naive pregnant teenager who attends Ariadne's literacy class. Even Ariadne's father, though only seen in glimpses, comes across as sweet, gentle and flawed. Jones' writing is graceful and lucid, and though the story ends unhappily, it doesn't end in despair. The Jacksons are strong women; they have survived, and will continue to survive. The Untelling is a poignant story about the often cruel randomness of life, and how one woman in particular copes with it.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Let those who complain that Joyce Carol Oates writes too much be silent: even her bad stuff is interesting. And her latest, The Falls, is her best novel since We Were the Mulvaneys. Like that memorable book, The Falls concerns the rise, fall(s) and reconstruction of a family in upstate New York. The Oatesian themes are all here: the terrible cost of even the smallest happiness, the degradation of being female, the deadly struggle between the powerful and the powerless.

The Falls spans from the early '50s to the late '70s, and begins with a calamity. Ariah Erskine's husband jumps from Niagara Falls only hours after their likely unconsummated wedding night at a resort hotel. Ariah seems to be another of Oates' nearly somnambulistic child-women, and we almost don't wonder why her equally neurasthenic husband tossed himself into the Falls. But during the wait for the whirlpool to disgorge his body, Ariah meets and falls in love with Dirk Burnaby, an idealistic young lawyer, and almost blossoms. They marry, have children, grow prosperous, and then, under the pressure of so much abundance, everything goes to smash. Bearing and raising children drain and coarsen Ariah, and the bewildered Dirk throws himself into one of the first Love Canal pollution lawsuits. This ruffles the feathers of some local bigwigs, and the consequences of his zeal are disastrous. Years pass before the three Burnaby children the saintly Chandler, the ironically named Royall, and the sad and vulnerable Juliet find a tentative healing.

Oates knows the Niagara Falls area down to its molecules: the way little rainbows come and go in the spray of the cataract, and the weird spell it casts to draw people to their ruin. She knows the smells, textures and habits of both wildflowers and toxic ooze from dumpsites. One could say that Niagara Falls is the book's most compelling character. Powerful, compassionate and ruefully humorous, The Falls is another example of Oates' inexhaustible brilliance.

Arlene McKanic lives in Jamaica, New York, but has never visited Niagara Falls.

Windsor Armstrong, the protagonist of Alice Randall's stellar sophomore novel Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, has a problem. Her son, star football player Pushkin X, is marrying a Russian lap dancer, and it's driving her crazy. The craziness springs from the fact that Windsor, a professor of Afro-Russian studies with a near fetish for the great poet after whom her son is named, is a control freak who regards her future daughter-in-law with a blunt racism.

The reader is initially not inclined to like Windsor very much. But Randall, the gifted author of the controversial novel The Wind Done Gone, eventually makes us care for the uptight, cerebral and self-obsessed professor. Certainly Windsor has a reason to be uptight; she was the child of a cold and narcissistic mother and a father whose love was so overwhelming that when he finally split with his wife he made Windsor feel guilty for not staying with him no matter that she was all of 10 years old and had no say in custody matters.

Windsor's tumultuous extended family is made up of folks of mixed race and mixed motives. Pushkin X is the product of a rape that occurred just before Windsor arrived at Harvard. Undaunted, she not only decided to keep the baby, but also went on to get her degree, though it meant having to leave her son behind in Detroit with a disreputable caretaker. Her gnawing guilt also colors her attitude toward Pushkin X, but Windsor's love for her son is as all-encompassing as her father's was for her. Randall infuses the book with the aching sadness of a mother who, having struggled and achieved a certain level of success, must find a way to allow her son to live his own life. In Windsor Armstrong, Randall has created an unusual, exasperating but ultimately sympathetic heroine. As Windsor says of herself, "There are stories within me and vanishings about me. Who will I show you? Who do you really need to see?" Pushkin and the Queen of Spades is a thought-provoking work from a writer with a unique view of the world.