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A review by billymac1962
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
3.0
My expectations were set really high for this one. It sat proudly at the top of my to-read pile with an imposing 4.40 average across close to 1400 ratings.
Now, I'm not one of those dinks who look to read popular novels (see Da Vinci Code pinheads) just so they can turn their haughty noses up on them and knock down averages), but I'm afraid my rating will knock this average down just a notch. Not because I'm a pinhead, but because
The Book of Negroes lacks what I need in a novel.
Time and again, when I read these types of novels, I can't help but hold them up to the bars that were raised by Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, or Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. Particularly A Fine Balance. That novel tore my heart apart. Mistry had developed those characters so well, that with every turmoil or setback they came up against, I hurt with them, I rooted for them,I damn near cried for them.
The slave trade is one of the truly dark stains on our history. All of those wasted lives, and families torn apart forever. How could this story of a girl sold into slavery and sent halfway around the world be anything but tragic?
While I felt for everything she had gone through, and felt for her losses, the betrayals, I didn't feel a whole lot for her.
The Book of Negroes reads like an autobiography, but this is a novel. I need novels to be rich in character development to engage me enough to care not only what is going on with them, but to care about them as if I know them.
There are rare exceptions to my rule (Brian Lumley's Necroscope series for one, and hey, if you're the type of person who will read everything from Book of Negroes to Necroscope, well, you are a kindred spirit to yours truly. Anyways...), but, by and large, strong characters are IT for me, and I found Hill to be somewhat lacking in this skill. There are some authors out there (Stephen King is one, John Irving is another)
who can paint a vivid picture of a character with the subtlest of details or quirks in the space of one paragraph, that will stick with you through the entire story. I found through this story, Aminata relays these terrible things that are happening to her, and I felt like nothing more than a bystander, albeit feeling sadness that these types of things really happened, much in the way I felt it when I learned about this in history class. I also found his prose to be just a little too simple.
Anyways, I'm rambling here and more or less repeating myself. Bottom line: I liked the story. I had hit a point with about 100 pages to go where I was anxious to move on to something else, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did.
Hill did touch me emotionally with the last few pages, so don't think that I didn't feel anything at all for Aminata. I just didn't feel it a whole lot through most of the story. There I go repeating myself again.
Okay. Good story. Thinly developed characters. Recommended for those interested in this point in history. And there were parts to the story where the plight of her people really hit me. Oh yeah, and I loved reading about what New York City was like in the late 1700s. Follow Broadway to the woods. That's rich.
Now, I'm not one of those dinks who look to read popular novels (see Da Vinci Code pinheads) just so they can turn their haughty noses up on them and knock down averages), but I'm afraid my rating will knock this average down just a notch. Not because I'm a pinhead, but because
The Book of Negroes lacks what I need in a novel.
Time and again, when I read these types of novels, I can't help but hold them up to the bars that were raised by Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, or Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. Particularly A Fine Balance. That novel tore my heart apart. Mistry had developed those characters so well, that with every turmoil or setback they came up against, I hurt with them, I rooted for them,I damn near cried for them.
The slave trade is one of the truly dark stains on our history. All of those wasted lives, and families torn apart forever. How could this story of a girl sold into slavery and sent halfway around the world be anything but tragic?
While I felt for everything she had gone through, and felt for her losses, the betrayals, I didn't feel a whole lot for her.
The Book of Negroes reads like an autobiography, but this is a novel. I need novels to be rich in character development to engage me enough to care not only what is going on with them, but to care about them as if I know them.
There are rare exceptions to my rule (Brian Lumley's Necroscope series for one, and hey, if you're the type of person who will read everything from Book of Negroes to Necroscope, well, you are a kindred spirit to yours truly. Anyways...), but, by and large, strong characters are IT for me, and I found Hill to be somewhat lacking in this skill. There are some authors out there (Stephen King is one, John Irving is another)
who can paint a vivid picture of a character with the subtlest of details or quirks in the space of one paragraph, that will stick with you through the entire story. I found through this story, Aminata relays these terrible things that are happening to her, and I felt like nothing more than a bystander, albeit feeling sadness that these types of things really happened, much in the way I felt it when I learned about this in history class. I also found his prose to be just a little too simple.
Anyways, I'm rambling here and more or less repeating myself. Bottom line: I liked the story. I had hit a point with about 100 pages to go where I was anxious to move on to something else, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did.
Hill did touch me emotionally with the last few pages, so don't think that I didn't feel anything at all for Aminata. I just didn't feel it a whole lot through most of the story. There I go repeating myself again.
Okay. Good story. Thinly developed characters. Recommended for those interested in this point in history. And there were parts to the story where the plight of her people really hit me. Oh yeah, and I loved reading about what New York City was like in the late 1700s. Follow Broadway to the woods. That's rich.