Book cover: The Almost Year, by Florence Engel Randall — Book cover: *The Almost Year*, by Florence Engel Randall

“There was nothing wrong with this house before you came,” Holly said, still standing in the doorway. “Everything started then.”

“That’s not really true,” Gary said, trying to be fair. He pushed back his glasses. “Before she came, we were always breaking dishes and things. Don’t you remember, Holly? There were plates and cups and saucers and—”

“That’s because we dropped them,” said Holly impatiently. “That’s because we were clumsy. It was our own fault. Things didn’t just go flying through the air by themselves. Nothing about this house is the same since she came.”

“I’m sorry I did.” I clenched my fists. “I didn’t want to. Aunt Cyd made me. I should have known better. I should have remembered what you were like when I first met you.

Oddly enough, I didn’t realize until just now that the narrator of The Almost Year is never named—usually I pick up on that sort of thing pretty quickly, but either I missed it or Randall was elegantly sneaky about it or both! I’ve done some poking around, but haven’t found any old interviews with her at all, let alone about this book—I’d be curious to know what her intent was there.

(On one hand, not naming a narrator can make for a closer connection between the character and the reader, because it almost removes a barrier between the two identities; on the other, it can leave the character untethered and literally without identity. On the third hand—but connected to the second hand?—even though this isn’t a Gothic, Randall’s previous two books WERE Gothics, and BOTH start with very Rebecca openings, so who knows, maybe she was just Really Into unnamed narrators?)

But, already, I digress.

Because her aunt and guardian is taking a temporary job out of state, a fifteen-year-old Black girl goes to live with an upper middle class white family in the suburbs for the school year. The situation is hard enough as it is—in addition to the weirdness of living with virtual strangers, there are the obvious differences in race and economic class (her aunt used to work for the family); also, our narrator has met the kids before and it Did Not Go Particularly Well—but on top of all of it, there might be a poltergeist in the house?

To say that I went into this book expecting to basically cringe for 239 pages is an understatement.

It was written by a white author, it features a Black narrator, and it is explicitly about race.

Books with that description with any publication date don’t generally have a great track record, and this one is fully fifty years old.

And for sure, there are some rough moments. But, as I said to someone recently, a lot of it definitely holds up way better than, say, the myriad Very Special Episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 in which Brandon Walsh Solves Racism, and honestly, it’s more nuanced and complicated than some far more recent books that have tackled similar issues.

Rather than dealing with white folks who are being actively, aggressively, hatefully racist, she deals more with white liberals and their guilt, with a teacher who compliments her on how articulate she is, with her host family making fried chicken on her first night in the house, with being one of the only Black students in a very very white school. The host family’s teen daughter invites her to hang out, but begrudgingly, and our narrator knows it’s because she’s been directed to do so by her parents.

She’s grieving the loss of her mother, she’s lonely, she’s angry, and she’s tired of being around people who are exhausting.

While it doesn’t use this language, It deals with privilege, it deals with the nonsensical reverse racism argument, it deals with microaggressions. It draws a distinction between feeling grateful versus feeling thankful. It touches on the difficulties with charity, in that in many cases, it’s more about the GIVER feeling good about themself than it is about the recipient. It deals, very much and from different angles, with tensions and differences in attitudes and beliefs between generations.

As in the other Randall books that I’ve read, the paranormal element is ultimately framed as MAYBE IT’S SCIENCE, MAYBE IT’S MAGIC. It’s interesting to me that both the Alice Walker review and the Kirkus review (links below) read it as a manifestation of our narrator’s frustration, full stop. While I think it’s clear that it’s supposed to be deliberately ambiguous, Randall also explicitly throws in the idea that the Ghosty Events could have been caused by a combination of Woo-Woo Energy from all four of the—all frustrated and unhappy in their own ways—kids in the house.

Again, it is not a perfect book. There are moments that are hair-raisingly dated; the descriptions of the city felt… one-note and unfortunate; while it wasn’t the cringefest I was bracing myself for, there are still some big ones in there.

I did particularly appreciate, though, the very end—because, spoiler, when the year is over, she goes back to the city with her aunt. Noise is made about how everyone will keep in touch, but our narrator knows that’s extremely unlikely, both because that’s just not how people are, and because SHE HERSELF doesn’t particularly want a continued relationship with the family.

She and the family she lived with for her Almost Year experienced flashes of understanding, and by the end were on at least peaceful terms, but this is not a story where everything is tied up with a big red bow and a cherry on top because Racism Got Solved.

History and life and the world and people are all far more complicated than that, and I’ll always give a book points for acknowledging that truth.

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