BROTHERS AND SISTERS

By Bebe Moore Campbell
Putnam (1994)
$22.95 476 pages
Reviewed by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

I don't require much of the literature I read. Only that at least once in every book I am able to come across a scene--a description--a phrase--that just blows me away. Out of 476 pages, I want to be hit with a piece of writing so powerful that I've got to close the cover over my finger, lean back in my chair, and say, "Damn." Only once, and I'm satisfied. Otherwise, what's the point?

Some years ago, I witnessed such an electric moment on the live stage in "Spunk," George C. Wolfe's adaptation of three short stories by the great Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neal Hurston. A young Florida woman was teasing her husband, accusing him of paying attention to the many flirting women who always seemed to be hovering around him. The young man, very much in love with his wife, did not seem to understand that she was not serious. He searched for some way to convince her that he was hers, and hers alone. "I don't care about those womens," he said. "I would rather that all the other womens in the world die than for you to get a toothache."

It was a phrase of crystalline-clear, gifted writing...an expression of love pure and powerful, worthy of a Heathcliffe or a Romeo...so wonderful that in the moment it was uttered, it rose off the stage on dark wings and soared above the audience.

All around the theatre, women caught their collective breaths, put their hands to their breasts, and said, "Ohhhh." The sound rippled through the crowd like a collective stage whisper, like a hand passing over every breast, so audible that even the actors paused in a bit of awe to share the moment.

I carry that moment with me. I can resurrect it when I want, one of my comforts at times when the real world turns dull and materialistic. Every year I read through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of novels and short stories, hoping to discover other such moments.

Well, there are hundreds and hundreds of pages in Bebe Moore Campbell's second novel, "Brothers And Sisters." Unfortunately, not a one of them contains a single such memorable piece of writing.

She has chosen a powerful enough subject. "Brothers And Sisters" is set in Los Angeles in a period just following the Rodney King rebellion (the rioting, worst in our nation's history, that took place after the original state trial cleared the four LA police officers who had been accused of beaten King). The King events are meant to form a tense backdrop to the real tension of the novel, which is the racial warfare that takes place among the employees of a bank when its president decides to hire a high-ranking African-American officer and promote a minority lending program.

Campbell has two things going for her. First, she knows her subject well, contemporary LA, the banking business itself, and the many-varied backgrounds of its employees. She seems at ease presenting a cornucopia of lives, whether it's the WASP wannabe-governor bank president, or a Salvadorean immigrant bank teller exchanging papusas and sweet potato pie with a young, ghetto Welfare mother, or an ambitious African-American buppie from the South Side of Chicago. Second, she has an aptitude for weaving together the threads of a dense plot, letting her colors rise and fall in good rhythm, never losing sight of either the individual subplots or her overall story line. That's no easy feat, and she should be applauded for it.

But in laying out such a plot as intricate in its own way as "A Tale Of Two Cities" or "War And Peace," Campbell has lost sight of the real people who are expected to carry it out, and that is "Brothers And Sisters"' biggest downfall. I once heard a book described as "the pushing of cardboard characters in pre-ordained moves across a chessboard." It's a cliché and should not be often used. Here, however, it is an apt description. Campbell's characters are not real. They do not breathe. They do not live.

When a rising-star African-American banking executive is introduced into the story, one is immediately struck by his close resemblance to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Same personal history, same wish to hide and rise above his raggedy-poor family background, even an almost-identical physical description. And Campbell's portrayal of this character's daily hygiene habits is both hilarious and poignant, the insightful picture of a man trying to wash away both his dark skin color and his racial and economic past:

"The shower lasted exactly thrity minutes, during which time he soaped himself and rinsed off seven times and vigorously scrubbed his fingernails with a small brush. He shampooed his short hair--four sudsings--which he did every morning, and applied an instant conditioner, letting it remain in his hair for five minutes before he rinsed it out. When he stepped from the shower, he smelled like sandalwood and coconut. He lotioned his body from head to toe with a thick white cream that was made by a French company and cost twenty-five dollars a jar. Humphrey couldn't stand being gray and ashy... As he carefully combed and brushed his hair, he avoided looking in the mirror. ... He brushed his teeth carefully and then gargled for about five minutes before he applied a very strong antiperspirant. Profuse perspiration was a problem for him, and in his position he couldn't afford to have body odor. He couldn't afford to be anything less than totally presentable and acceptable at all times."

Exactly what you'd expect a Clarence Thomas-type character to do, every morning, every day, preparing to meet and be the Man.

And so when this same character is later accused of sexual harassment on the job, one is forced to cringe at its predictability.

But if Campbell's characters are cardboard, she at least has given them a decidedly complex and emotionally loaded gameboard to play on.

At some points the issues hit bullet-straight, as when an angry African-American woman berates her white co-worker over a comment about affirmative action: "You've had affirmative action for white folks ever since this country got started. Every time a black person couldn't get the job because he was black, that was affirmative action for white people. Every time we get turned away from the luxury apartment building and the new housing development, that's affirmative action for white people. And it's not because you work harder and you're smarter and have higher SAT's. It's because you're white."

But more often, the characters wander around in a morass with no moral compass to guide them, except, perhaps, Rodney King's poignant entreaty, "Can't we all just get along?" Campbell seems to think that each of us is guilty of some form of prejudice (though some are more guilty than others). Her characters point a finger of blame at someone else only to find four of their own fingers pointing back at them.

There's a good story here. And a thoughtful writer's important views on pressing, contemporary American issues. But if you're looking for just one transforming, epiphinal moment, one phrase out of thousands that can make you say, "Wow," then look away. There's not a one to be found in "Brothers And Sisters," and that's a little disappointing from someone whom Publishers Weekly says reminds them of Harper Lee.