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bent's review against another edition
2.0
This is a very highly regarded book, and I have to admit, I don't get it. It reads like a book for kids, which it's obviously not. I didn't find any of it all that compelling. I got a little bored when Hughes started talking about the different kids' personalities. Didn't really care for any of the characters, or felt that any of it was shocking or all that interesting. This book just didn't really float my boat.
mimii's review against another edition
3.0
Took a while to get into this book, but read through for book club. Despite not really liking it, it generated a great discussion... nature of good and evil, role of parents, and motives of pirates.
booknrrd's review against another edition
4.0
This book was both dry and unexpected and funny and not. I don't know. I have a feeling my book group will hate it, and I will blamed for choosing it, which weighed upon me the whole time I was reading it. I miss those darn kids, especially little Laura and Rachel.
hayesstw's review against another edition
5.0
The most memorable thing was what it had to say about culture shock, of how the reality of England was so different for the children than the mental image conjured up by being told about it when they had never seen it. At the time I first read it I had been in England for 5 months, and the book helped me to understand my own experience of culture shock. So might St Matthew, when recounting some trivial incident, write, "that it might be fulfilled what was written by the prophet so-and-so".
johndomc's review against another edition
5.0
English kids growing up in Jamaica. Their parents decide eventually that something must be done for them: they must go to school in England. So the kids get shipped on a steamer, which is promptly captured by pirates. The kids take to the seas.
Memorable phrases. At night the kids in their room convene "the Parliament of Beds."
"...dominated with the easy empire of nightmare."
"...and all with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one's own especial pleasure..."
Watching adults get progressively more drunk: "The expression of their faces became more candid, and yet more mask-like: hiding less, there was also less to hide."
Something cavalier about the writing. A little bit wild-eyed.
Emily, the oldest, awe-inspiring to the Liddlies. Untouchable. "The cleverest! The muscles of a giant, the ancient experience of a serpent!" !
Hughes writes from the height of a kid.
"Emily omitted to wash, since there seemed such a hurry, but made up for it by spending an unusually long time over her prayers. She pressed her eyeballs devoutly with her fingers to make sparks appear, in spite of the slightly sick feeling it always induced: and then, already sound asleep, clambered, I suppose, into bed."
Memorable phrases. At night the kids in their room convene "the Parliament of Beds."
"...dominated with the easy empire of nightmare."
"...and all with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one's own especial pleasure..."
Watching adults get progressively more drunk: "The expression of their faces became more candid, and yet more mask-like: hiding less, there was also less to hide."
Something cavalier about the writing. A little bit wild-eyed.
Emily, the oldest, awe-inspiring to the Liddlies. Untouchable. "The cleverest! The muscles of a giant, the ancient experience of a serpent!" !
Hughes writes from the height of a kid.
"Emily omitted to wash, since there seemed such a hurry, but made up for it by spending an unusually long time over her prayers. She pressed her eyeballs devoutly with her fingers to make sparks appear, in spite of the slightly sick feeling it always induced: and then, already sound asleep, clambered, I suppose, into bed."
internpepper's review against another edition
3.0
I wasn’t a big fan of the ending, but it was at least surprising. This is an okay adventure story featuring pirates. I wasn’t a big fan of the main characters, but the antagonists were a little more interesting to learn about.
manwithanagenda's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I picked this book up thinking, despite the disclaimers of many of you, that 'A High Wind in Jamaica' might be a good companion to 'Treasure Island'. A tale of pirates and the adventures of children captives that would be entertaining to another kid. Hmm, well not so much.
Most children would be able to recognize themselves in the imaginative exploits and musings of the Bas-Thornton and Hernandez children, but there are some elements of the story that would require a mature middle schooler or high schooler's understanding.
The setting of the novel is colonial Jamaica a generation or two after the emancipation of British slaves, that and a few other references make me think the 1850s. The book, first published in 1929, has a great deal of racism in the beginning. Hughes isn't being malicious, but in portraying how imperialism-minded whites perceived blacks at the time he makes this book a difficult one to recommend to any classroom.
The racism is the big hurdle, but there's a reason 'A High Wind in Jamaica' was the first book reprinted as a New York Review Book Classic, Hughes is a brilliant writer. The worlds of the children and the adults are sharply delineated; at every situation Hughes highlights how much the adult and children misunderstand one another, usually to the adults' detriment. Hughes somehow remembered and could explicate the unconscious cruelty and single-minded nature of a child's thoughts.
The children are in tears over their lost pet, Tabby: "The death of Old Sam had no such effect: there is after all vast difference between a negro and a favorite cat." Hughes later points out how, unknown to their parents, the children had given that cat first place in their hearts, with second and third perhaps going to each other.
And the book has barely started.
Hughes puts most of the emphasis on Emily, but all 7 children are well-rounded and their different perspectives all contribute to the book. Margaret, at 13 is by a couple years the eldest so she isn't heard from as much. There are a lot of adult themes in this book and the perspective is so direct and immediate that its more unnerving then other books (or movies even) that show the terrible things that children can be capable of. But, that same close perspective makes you understand them so completely one can't judge them too harshly.
Don't get me wrong, the book is funny. A group of pirates, purposely made by Hughes (as he says in the introduction of this edition) of the later, less blood-thirsty, sort, end up with a handful of children aged 3 1/2 to 13 to take care of, who do you think is going to take the upper hand?
I have another scene, again from early on, which helped make the book -
Having come into port, Emily sees a group of "beautiful young men" "mincing" as they disembark. She turns to the Captain and asks "Who are they?" he says, distractedly:
"'Oh, those?--Fairies.'
'Hey! Yey! Yey!' cried the mate, more disapprovingly than ever.
'Fairies?' cried Emily in astonishment.
But Captain Jonsen began to blush. He went crimson from the nape of his neck to the bald patches on the top of his head, and left.
'He is silly!' said Emily."
Very silly indeed.
This book can be pretty harrowing, there are several pretty shocking scenes, but everything is filtered through a child's perspective so none of it terribly graphic; most of it is only hinted at. The deaths of a house cat or a pet monkey end up weighing a great deal more than rape and murder to young children unacquainted with the particulars. And that, compared with the general rosy innocence granted to children, is what most disturbed readers of the book when it first came out, it was a bestseller anyway.*
So, I won't be reading this to the nephew any time soon, but this is not a book that's not to be passed up if you're like me and enjoy reading young adult and children's lit. Because, that's what this is - for grown-ups! That kind of idea could go places.
*It took awhile in America because, according to, again, Hughes himself, the country was caught up in reading 'The Cradle of the Deep' and wasn't going to digest two seafaring youngster stories at once. 'The Cradle of the Deep' by actress Joan Lowell was a fictitious memoir along the lines of 'A Million Little Pieces'. In 1929 the offended body was The Book-of-the-Month Club, not Oprah, but you get the idea.
Most children would be able to recognize themselves in the imaginative exploits and musings of the Bas-Thornton and Hernandez children, but there are some elements of the story that would require a mature middle schooler or high schooler's understanding.
The setting of the novel is colonial Jamaica a generation or two after the emancipation of British slaves, that and a few other references make me think the 1850s. The book, first published in 1929, has a great deal of racism in the beginning. Hughes isn't being malicious, but in portraying how imperialism-minded whites perceived blacks at the time he makes this book a difficult one to recommend to any classroom.
The racism is the big hurdle, but there's a reason 'A High Wind in Jamaica' was the first book reprinted as a New York Review Book Classic, Hughes is a brilliant writer. The worlds of the children and the adults are sharply delineated; at every situation Hughes highlights how much the adult and children misunderstand one another, usually to the adults' detriment. Hughes somehow remembered and could explicate the unconscious cruelty and single-minded nature of a child's thoughts.
The children are in tears over their lost pet, Tabby: "The death of Old Sam had no such effect: there is after all vast difference between a negro and a favorite cat." Hughes later points out how, unknown to their parents, the children had given that cat first place in their hearts, with second and third perhaps going to each other.
And the book has barely started.
Hughes puts most of the emphasis on Emily, but all 7 children are well-rounded and their different perspectives all contribute to the book. Margaret, at 13 is by a couple years the eldest so she isn't heard from as much. There are a lot of adult themes in this book and the perspective is so direct and immediate that its more unnerving then other books (or movies even) that show the terrible things that children can be capable of. But, that same close perspective makes you understand them so completely one can't judge them too harshly.
Don't get me wrong, the book is funny. A group of pirates, purposely made by Hughes (as he says in the introduction of this edition) of the later, less blood-thirsty, sort, end up with a handful of children aged 3 1/2 to 13 to take care of, who do you think is going to take the upper hand?
I have another scene, again from early on, which helped make the book -
Having come into port, Emily sees a group of "beautiful young men" "mincing" as they disembark. She turns to the Captain and asks "Who are they?" he says, distractedly:
"'Oh, those?--Fairies.'
'Hey! Yey! Yey!' cried the mate, more disapprovingly than ever.
'Fairies?' cried Emily in astonishment.
But Captain Jonsen began to blush. He went crimson from the nape of his neck to the bald patches on the top of his head, and left.
'He is silly!' said Emily."
Very silly indeed.
This book can be pretty harrowing, there are several pretty shocking scenes, but everything is filtered through a child's perspective so none of it terribly graphic; most of it is only hinted at. The deaths of a house cat or a pet monkey end up weighing a great deal more than rape and murder to young children unacquainted with the particulars. And that, compared with the general rosy innocence granted to children, is what most disturbed readers of the book when it first came out, it was a bestseller anyway.*
So, I won't be reading this to the nephew any time soon, but this is not a book that's not to be passed up if you're like me and enjoy reading young adult and children's lit. Because, that's what this is - for grown-ups! That kind of idea could go places.
*It took awhile in America because, according to, again, Hughes himself, the country was caught up in reading 'The Cradle of the Deep' and wasn't going to digest two seafaring youngster stories at once. 'The Cradle of the Deep' by actress Joan Lowell was a fictitious memoir along the lines of 'A Million Little Pieces'. In 1929 the offended body was The Book-of-the-Month Club, not Oprah, but you get the idea.
kwils217's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
tymelgren's review against another edition
3.0
I saw this on some list of the hundred best books of the 20th century and I'd never heard of it or the guy who wrote it so I thought maybe I should read it. Still all I know about the author is from one sentence at the front of the book - "Richard Hughes (1900-1976) attended Oxford and lived for most of his life in a castle in Wales." Alright. But the book started out good and weird and I was excited and expected it to just keep getting weirder and weirder, but half the things that kept threatening to happen never happened and it calmed down a lot and got a little boring. Kids in here are real kids though, grumpy and amazed and horrified; wandery brains and watery memories.