A review by iffer
The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

3.0

This is a slow burn of a book. At times it is an unusual historical fiction slice-of-life novel that simultaneously is mundane and poignant. The pacing is uneven, though, and switching from Octavian's POV to third person epistles is jarring, and the latter was, in my opinion, somewhat boring. In many ways, this book is more of a social-historical commentary, rather than a a novel, alluding to many of the facts and complexity one might encounter in nonfiction texts about race in the early US, but the balance between with the narrative is too often overbalanced, making this a ponderous, choppy read.