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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
This was an interesting story. Not a lot of non-romance books can hold my attention for long lately, but this one did. It is awful what human people, just like you and me, had to endure. This story is told from the point of view of Lizzie, a slave woman who has two children by her "owner". He has traveled to the free state of Ohio for vacation and has taken Lizzie along. The story follows Lizzie and three other slave women who are also at the resort. There were a couple of parts I skipped through, only because I wanted to get to the end to see what was going to happen to Lizzie and her children.
I wish I could give this three and a half stars. This book began with a great idea, but failed to fully explore the situation. The book is about four slave "wenches" who are taken by their masters to Tawawa, a vacation resort in Ohio - a freed state. At Tawawa, they are able to forge friendships with women who aren't on their plantation, a white farmwife who visits the resort frequently and free blacks. The central character is Lizzie, who is with a "good" master who has fathered her two children and she considers the man that she loves. As such, her feelings are the most confused about what it means to be free and a slave and what she risks by risking freedom. The other women have master's of varying "goodness" ranging from one who rents out his wench to the resort owners and one who beats his wench and treats her extremely poorly. Tawawa is a real place and there is rich history to be mined here, but I wished for more backstory on the three central women and more depth and introspection from the characters. Overall, I felt like this book was just too short.
This absolutely grabbed my head and my heart and took me over for a day. I am glad I had the afternoon free so that I could just keep reading, because it snuck up on me. I began reading when I was having a bad day, and put it down several times because of my own pain - I was struggling too much to connect and wanted to blame the book. When I picked it up the next day, I realized that while the book communicates huge amounts of pain from the lives of its characters, it does it in beautiful and nuanced ways that are compelling (and that my hesitation the day before was about me, not the book). I wept for each of the characters, and was by turns angry for and with them. Hauntingly done.
Wow. Every good word said about Dolen Perkins-Valdez' writing is true, true, true. She's so gentle with her words that they have a stronger impact than most anything I've read. This is an amazing writer.
The idea made me curious—slave owners going on vacation with their mistress slaves? Unheard of. It made me want to read the book!
But the story was written poorly. The narrator was monotone and didn’t engage me into the story. I wanted to DNF, but I had a few chapters left, so I pushed through.
The timelines and point of views were unclear. It would be the middle or end of a chapter by the time I realized whether it was set in the past or present and which character the story was about. It was very frustrating to read. Very disappointing book.
But the story was written poorly. The narrator was monotone and didn’t engage me into the story. I wanted to DNF, but I had a few chapters left, so I pushed through.
The timelines and point of views were unclear. It would be the middle or end of a chapter by the time I realized whether it was set in the past or present and which character the story was about. It was very frustrating to read. Very disappointing book.
I didn't like the subject. How can a nation claiming to be founded under God, ever condone such an institution. Slavery is immoral and it brought out the inherent depravity of those who practiced it. if this had not been the Book of the Month for our book club, I would not even have considered reading it. I give it a 3 because it was written nicely.
I really struggled with this book. Sadly, not because of the content but the lack of character development. I don't know what I was thinking picking this book out but I should not have read this one after "Kitchen House". While I found a lot of similarities I didn't like this book nearly as much as Kitchen House. I did not feel the impact that these sort of novels should come with/bring to the reader.
This novel looks at the strata of slave society from nearly every angle: What, exactly, is the rank of a child born to a plantation owner and a house slave? When a girl is bumped up to the status of master's mistress, what sorts of favors does she owe her friends back in the slave quarters? Lizzie, the "privileged" "wench" of a "kind" master (this story necessitates many quotation marks as it problematizes many notions), has to ask herself these questions and more when she stays at an Ohio resort that caters to Southern slave owners and their black mistresses. It's a well-crafted story that steers clear of cliches but never complexity. Still, the prose were uneven and I never quite forgot that I was reading a book by a first-time novelist. I'll be picking up her next one, though.
Could have been longer, to really let you settle into each characters emotional states.
I liked the POV not changing and only seeing through Lizzie.
There were some weaker plot points and I've read better novels with similar plots and themes.
I liked the POV not changing and only seeing through Lizzie.
There were some weaker plot points and I've read better novels with similar plots and themes.
This book had such a good premise. I went into it with a lot of promise and hope - only to be vastly disappointed. The characters are far too shallow, the plots and characters left unexplored, and an ending far too mystical for the tone of the book.