Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Le confessioni di Frannie Langton

This is a very dark, slow historical gothic written in the form of a confessional text by Frannie Langton, who has been accused of murdering her mistress and is now being tried in court in London. She tells her life story, growing up enslaved on a farm called Paradise in Jamaica and later being taken to London to work for another rich family. As her account progresses, she reveals more and more of the sinister things she was forced to partake in in Jamaica. Both of the men who she has to work for carry extremely racist scientific beliefs, and Frannie plays a role in their experiments. In London, Frannie and Marguerite, the madame of the house, develop feelings for each other and start in affair, that leads to a very complicated and heartbreaking lovestory and some great steamy scenes.
Overall, this is very suspenseful and well done in terms of mystery, although there are some points that drag on for a bit too long. Through a writing style rich in similes invoking food, nature and darkness a lush atmosphere is created. As the form is allowing Frannie to tell her own story, questions of external vs. internal perception and harmful narratives are discussed in a thought-provoking and challenging way throughout the book.

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library_kb's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I read this book for bookclub, and it was one that I procrastinated on because I just didn't want to pick it up and read it (I finished it 10 minutes before the meeting). I never really connected with the main character and had a hard time really understanding her choices, especially in the round-about way that the story was told, with a lot of vague references. That may have been part of the author's intent, but didn't draw me to the book. This is also a story with a lot of darkness--historically accurate but hard to read.

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eli_jw's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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aseel_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

not sure how i feel about this. the writing was very easy to read and made the whole reading experience quite easy, which is a huge plus, since the subject matter was quite hard. i thought the idea of the story really interesting and there were some interesting moments. the plot was completely wild and unpredictable. but i felt like the character was not well fleshed out, which made some of beliefs/actions just seem unrealistic/out of character/just random? i don't know how to explain it but i didn't really believe the character at times.

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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Confessions of Frannie Langton was a perfect book for June, what with it being Pride month and Read Caribbean month. It’s historical fiction, set in both Jamaica and Georgian England and centres on Frannie Langton, a servant and former slave who is accused of murdering her employers. While Frannie can’t recall what happened that fateful night, what she does remember, the story of her life and how she came to be in the dock, is quite the story - one that is definitely worth reading. It involves a childhood on a Jamaican sugar plantation, being raised by an enslaved woman but also taught to read, being forced to serve as scientific assistant on warped and horrific experiments, and then taken to England (where she is free technically but certainly not in reality) and given to another man who puts her to work as a servant. A relationship with her mistress, an opium user, leads to tragic consequences.

I was absorbed in Frannie’s story from beginning to end. It’s certainly a fresh take on the gothic novel, a story which has some initial passing similarities to Jane Eyre but goes so much further. It takes a pointed look at the intersectionality of race, gender, class and sexuality and lays bare the worst excesses of a “science” driven by racism. I was constantly struck by white men acting atrociously and believing they had some divine right to control and direct the lives of others, especially women and moreso when then woman was Black. The story also highlighted how Black knowledge was both feared yet also exploited by white men.

The plot was multi-layered with many additional themes and sub-plots. Occasionally it felt a bit much, especially towards the end of the book, but Collins’s writing and Frannie’s voice always pulled me back.

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actualspinster's review against another edition

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3.75

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caseythereader's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

📚 What a page turner! Right from the start I had to know what happened to Frannie every step of the way, even as things got increasingly dark.
📚 This book does feature a forbidden sapphic romance, but I appreciated that neither party had an existential crisis over it.
📚 This book is full of complex, complicated characters and it doesn't let anyone off the hook for the choices they made.
📚 It's a gothic novel not in the sense of the supernatural, but in that the truth of our racist history is grim and unspeakable.
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Content warnings: addiction, alcoholism, child abuse, child death, death, domestic abuse, drug abuse, emotional abuse, incest, homophobia,medical content, medical trauma, miscarriage, misogyny, physical abuse, racial slurs, racism, rape, sexism, slavery, sexual violence, suicide, torture, trafficking, and violence.

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