Book Review: James by Percival Everett

“Belief has nothing to do with truth.”

When enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to sold to a man in New Orleans and separated from his family forever, he decides to hide in nearby Jackson Island until he can decide what to do. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father on that same day. This leads to a collision that leads to Jim being wanted for murder and being a runaway. This also leads to a dangerous journey via a raft, down the Mississippi River towards the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

“At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.”

I avoided this book for the longest time because I believed it would be too depressing for my state of mind at the time. I went to Barnes and Noble with a friend who bought me a copy of this book and seeing how slim it was, I decided to just give it a go and then couldn’t put it down. Everyone says this is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn, which is a book I’ve never read, so you don’t have to be worried about not getting it if you haven’t read it. I decided to ignore all talks of a retelling and just read the book as its own thing. Even though this book is about slavery and its many horrors, Everett finds a way to make it a great adventure novel that always tried to put the humanity of its characters at the forefront of the novel.

“I did not look away. I wanted to feel the anger. I was befriending my anger, learning not only how to feel it, but perhaps how to use it.”

I don’t understand why the Goodreads blurb of this book calls it “ferociously funny”, there’s nothing funny about this book. I can’t even think of one scene that made me laugh out loud. This book is serious and thought provoking and no, this is not euphemism for boring. It really gives you a lot to think about, especially the power of language, how we use it and how it’s used to empower or colonize a group of people. This is not an easy book to read because lots of terrible things abound and most of these terrible things happen to people because of the color of their skin but Everett’s writing makes it a fast read.

I found this book to be suspenseful and heart wrenching and I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads.

Have you heard about this book? Have you read it? Let me know in the comments what you think about it!

Leggy