3.75 stars. The Turner House is Angela Flournoy's debut novel, and it is a solid one. Her writing is strong, and as you read this book you can definitely see the strength of her prose in certain choice passages and sentences. She has the ability to make you stop as you're reading and ponder the structure of a sentence, explore the layers of meaning in a paragraph. I am looking forward to reading any other future works.

This book tells the story of the Turner family, whose matriarch, Viola, is declining in health, and whose family home on Yarrow Street has to be dealt with amidst the 2008 housing crisis. There are thirteen Turner children, all grown and with families of their own. I felt that Flournoy's ability to tell a great story really shone through in the fact that each Turner child has their own fully developed personality and storyline. The reader is able to imagine each sibling individually instead of getting confused about who is who, which I think is no easy feat.

We mainly focus on Cha-Cha, the eldest son and self-imposed patriarch, and Lelah, the baby of the family who has been evicted and is dealing with a gambling addiction. I loved the device of telling and intertwining the story of the eldest and the youngest sibling, who are about 20 years apart in age. By telling their stories and their relationships to the family home, Flournoy tells the story of the Turner family as a whole. Cha-Cha is haunted by a spirit that forces him to come to terms with other personal issues, including his role within his family. This book may seem to be about whether the spirit is "real" or not, but I interpreted it more as a vehicle to tell this family's story, its past, present, and future. Ghosts are real, in the fact that they reveal our personal fears, longings, memories, and hopes. This is a story about family and home, and I enjoyed it.