Senna, Danzy: Symptomatic

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Symptomatic is the story of a young, biracial woman who moves to New York City in the 1990s to work for a magazine. She forms attachments to the wrong sorts of people and pays the price for it, all while feeling uncomfortable about her identity and wondering which world--black or white or neither--she fits into. This lack of a clear racial identity is a huge issue for her and for the people she meets--rather tediously so, actually. Reading the book, one gets the sense at first that there's some mystery about her identity--why she is nondescript, why secretive, why she doesn't seem to form lasting connections. But it turns out (unfortunately) not to be that kind of a book. She's not hiding anything, at least no more than most of us are. The book ends rather differently. After a bunch of well-written prose that doesn't, however, really go anywhere, the conclusion comes fast and action-packed and rather hard to believe. While I enjoyed reading the book--because the writing is good, as I said, because it promised a pay off--I'm left feeling disappointed that there wasn't more to it.