I did not know this when I read this book, but many parts of it are based on movies that starred Sidney Poitier. Most of these movies are unknown to me. Having knowledge of these movies would, in my opinion, help the reader make better sense of the story.
Sidney Poitier movies the book references:
Chapter Two ~~ The Defiant Ones 1958; A Patch of Blue 1965; Band of Angels 1957
Chapter Four ~~ Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967; No Way Out 1950
Chapter Five ~~ Lilies of the Field 1963; Buck and the Preacher 1972
Chapter Six ~~ In the Heat of the Night 1967; They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! 1970
Not Sidney Poitier is the full name of the main character of the story, an orphan boy whose mother, before she died, invested in Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting when it was just starting out, leaving her son Not Sidney with a large fortune. Ted Turner takes the boy into his home and that's where Not Sidney grows up.
His name causes him a lot of problems, especially in school. He gets bullied a lot and Ted hires instructors to guide Not Sidney. He eventually drops out of high school and he buys a car and sets out for California from Atlanta, Georgia. He soon run afoul of some racist country Georgia cops who arrest Not Sidney. A prison transport bus crashes and Not Sidney escapes but chained to another prisoner, Patrice, who is as racist as the cops who arrested Not Sidney.
Not Sidney manages to find his way back to Ted Turner and then decides he wants to try attending college. Even though he is a dropout, he pretty much bribes the school to let him in. Oddly, one of his professors has the same name as the author of this book, Percival Everett. School turns out to be pretty much a waste of Not Sidney's time, but he does meet a girl who invites him home for Thanksgiving with her family. Her family are mixed race people who are not pleased to see their daughter is dating a dark skinned man. But the father does some snooping into Not Sidney's background and discovers that he is extremely wealthy which immediately changes everyone's opinion about Not Sidney. He breaks up with the girl and leaves.
He embarks again on a car trip to California and it goes about as badly as the first trip did. He gets into trouble when his car breaks down and he gets involved with some religious kooks and local racist cops.
He wriggles out of trouble once again and decides to give up driving to California. He takes a plane instead. Smart move.
I found the first part of the story, Chapter One, boring. The portrayals of Ted Turner and Jane Fonda were kind of mean, I felt. Of course, I have no idea what Ted and Jane are like in reality so maybe the portrayals are spot on. I still didn't like it.
The story picked up once Not Sidney left home. The adventures were slightly familiar, the prison bus escape and him chained to another prisoner and running to avoid being captured did remind me of an old movie I might have seen as a kid. (I think the only other Poitier movie I saw was Lilies of the Field, but it was so long ago I did not catch the reference to it in Chapter Five.) The story certainly got more entertaining and more amusing when Not Sidney was having his adventures as a young man. It's just too bad I didn't know about all the movies that it referenced along the way. I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had known.
Thank you to Wikipedia for enlightening me about the old movies!
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
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