My endless thanks to Seji @theartisangeek for introducing me to Jacqueline Woodson, who I incredibly had not come across before! But I’m officially hooked now. You all probably know that motherhood is one of my main jams when it comes to reading topics and Red at the Bone, centred around an unexpected teenage pregnancy, delivers a fantastic new aspect to the subject!

When Iris falls pregnant by Aubrey at 15, their worlds are changed but in very different ways. Iris comes from money, while Aubrey and his mother subsist on food stamps, so when the baby comes and ties their families together, they struggle to align both of their wants and needs. Aubrey is content with his low level job in the mail room of a law firm, doting on his daughter, while Iris is determined to achieve her dreams of going to college.

Woodson’s prose is lyrical but sparse, providing a vivid snapshot of the characters’ lives. She favours short sentences, short paragraphs and short chapters, and yet at no point is it not enough. She deftly handles a myriad of weighty topics including motherhood, race, class, education, sexuality, identity, and even the right to die. Although it’s a short book and obviously each topic isn’t given a hundred pages of exploration, it never feels rushed or forced, and Woodson approaches them all sensitively.

Nothing is more interesting to me than unconventional motherhood, and while we might not agree with the choices these characters make, we cannot deny them the right to make them. At 16, Iris can’t know what she wants or what she will want in the future, and here we see how her decision plays out over the years, occasionally jumping back in time to see how the two families came to be where they are now.

After this vibrant and moving portrait of two families, I will be now hunting down more of Woodson’s books! (Although I hope she uses speech marks rather than italics for dialogues because for some reason that really threw me??)