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lovetoread62's review against another edition
4.0
I almost stopped reading but am glad that I didn't. The writing is fantastic, poetic. The story moves around a lot and can be hard to follow, but you read it for the lyrical feel.
jgmencarini's review against another edition
3.0
This is a good first novel. Until the last 75 pages, I would have given it four stars - especially because the multiple narrators'/characters' viewpoints were inventive and well-conceived. After a lot of great build-up, though, the story fizzles out at the end. The author writes luminously beautiful sentences but they don't really advance the plot in the last quarter of the book. I also really appreciated the inclusion of references to how the violence of slavery traumatized and dehumanized everyone involved in or exposed to it.
One minor quibble from a social justice perspective - two of the female characters, Mena and Pallas, fall a bit into the old "magical
Negro" trope, which only perpetuates racial stereotypes - namely that certain dignified African-Americans have almost supernatural abilities from which white folks gain inspiration and learning. This was disappointing to me as a reader highly aware of racial stereotyping, and the perpetuation of such tropes in mainstream media.
One minor quibble from a social justice perspective - two of the female characters, Mena and Pallas, fall a bit into the old "magical
Negro" trope, which only perpetuates racial stereotypes - namely that certain dignified African-Americans have almost supernatural abilities from which white folks gain inspiration and learning. This was disappointing to me as a reader highly aware of racial stereotyping, and the perpetuation of such tropes in mainstream media.
cook_memorial_public_library's review against another edition
5.0
A 2013 staff fiction favorite recommended by Susie and Connie.
Susie's review: Oh my goodness. This was an incredible book. Wash is the name of a slave circa 1812-1830ish. He is saltwater, meaning he came over on the ocean (in his mother's womb actually) and was not born from a country born slave (meaning someone who was already enslaved in the U.S. when they were born).
His mother gives him many ways to cope with the hard hard life he is put to, using traditional African spirituality. Richardson, his owner, puts him to work that almost completely breaks him, as a breeding sire hired out to neighboring slave owners, but it is his mother's ways, and a special relationship with a slavewoman healer, Pallas, that ultimately allows him to retain his own humanity for himself. This was a beautiful book.
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1450205__Swash%20wrinkle__Orightresult__X2?lang=eng&suite=pearl
Susie's review: Oh my goodness. This was an incredible book. Wash is the name of a slave circa 1812-1830ish. He is saltwater, meaning he came over on the ocean (in his mother's womb actually) and was not born from a country born slave (meaning someone who was already enslaved in the U.S. when they were born).
His mother gives him many ways to cope with the hard hard life he is put to, using traditional African spirituality. Richardson, his owner, puts him to work that almost completely breaks him, as a breeding sire hired out to neighboring slave owners, but it is his mother's ways, and a special relationship with a slavewoman healer, Pallas, that ultimately allows him to retain his own humanity for himself. This was a beautiful book.
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1450205__Swash%20wrinkle__Orightresult__X2?lang=eng&suite=pearl
in2reading's review against another edition
3.0
With beautiful prose the author renders the interior lives of various slave and free characters in this novel set in the late 1700s-early 1800s Tennessee.
renee_pompeii's review against another edition
Not in the mood for Revolutionary War historical fiction, but the topic is interesting. I might revisit this.
wordnerdy's review against another edition
3.0
http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2013/03/2013-book-74.html
dorothysnarker's review against another edition
2.0
Between the plotless meandering and the storytelling in third person, switching between characters, this book is a hot mess.
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