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eliquery 's review for:
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
by Kim Michele Richardson
Strong character development:
No
I have strong feelings about this book, and not in a good way.
I found the characters flat and one dimensional without any character development. The only character with any growth was our main character, and even that seemed to be a last minute detail. Considering this is supposed to be a book about the power of books, it's impressive how little books are seen to impact or change anyone -instead, the author uses whether a character loves books or not to signify their quality of character, which will then remain unchanged for the entire rest of the read. Everyone was either distinctly good and book loving or evil and cruel, with no room for anything in between. The writing style truly made it seem like the author doesn't trust her audience to have any sort of ability to think. Most scenes were immediately summarized with exposition on what that scene meant, why the situation was bad, and how the reader should feel about it.
But, I think the part that really made me dispise this book was the way the author approached the themes of womanhood and race.
The historical mistreatment of women is relevant to the book, an important subject to depict and discuss as a whole. But the books approach to these matters were tactless and gratuitous. There were at least three separate assault scenes, and they contributed absolutely no value or new perspective to the story. Except, maybe, the very first -which could be argued to establish plot and world building -but every other instance made little sense in the scope of the plot and characters, and was just an out of place and unconnected act of cruelty. These scenes, like the majority of the intense cruelty in this book, felt like it was placed there purely for shock value.
Finally, I found the way the author depicted racism and the experience of people of color in this book to be incredibly tone-deaf and irresponsible. The author spends most of the book drilling in to you how almost everyone hates our main character because of her skin, and how creully they can do so. I think this already lands a little weird, as it substitutes a white character to be on the other receiving end of racism, and then boils down racism to be exclusively about skin color, completely ignoring the many other prejudiced factors and beliefs that shaped the unjust hatred of the time. It outright states that everyone views her as a person of color, but she is even MORE discriminated against than other people of color, because she is blue. But worst of all, the concluding message of the book is essentially "but she isn't a person of color, so stop treating her bad". To borrow the life experiences of people of color, water out the vicious depth and impact of that racism, and then end it with the horribly harmful takeaway: that the only thing wrong with that prejudice is that it's targeted at the wrong person? Disrespectful, to say the least.
I have no idea if this was the intended message of the book, or if it is an accurate depiction of the experiences of the blue fugates. But any intended message was shallow and half formed, any historical accuracy was spoken to unethically, and frankly I can't understand how anyone likes this book. I highly recommend to NOT pick this book up.
I found the characters flat and one dimensional without any character development. The only character with any growth was our main character, and even that seemed to be a last minute detail. Considering this is supposed to be a book about the power of books, it's impressive how little books are seen to impact or change anyone -instead, the author uses whether a character loves books or not to signify their quality of character, which will then remain unchanged for the entire rest of the read. Everyone was either distinctly good and book loving or evil and cruel, with no room for anything in between. The writing style truly made it seem like the author doesn't trust her audience to have any sort of ability to think. Most scenes were immediately summarized with exposition on what that scene meant, why the situation was bad, and how the reader should feel about it.
But, I think the part that really made me dispise this book was the way the author approached the themes of womanhood and race.
The historical mistreatment of women is relevant to the book, an important subject to depict and discuss as a whole. But the books approach to these matters were tactless and gratuitous. There were at least three separate assault scenes, and they contributed absolutely no value or new perspective to the story. Except, maybe, the very first -which could be argued to establish plot and world building -but every other instance made little sense in the scope of the plot and characters, and was just an out of place and unconnected act of cruelty. These scenes, like the majority of the intense cruelty in this book, felt like it was placed there purely for shock value.
Finally, I found the way the author depicted racism and the experience of people of color in this book to be incredibly tone-deaf and irresponsible. The author spends most of the book drilling in to you how almost everyone hates our main character because of her skin, and how creully they can do so. I think this already lands a little weird, as it substitutes a white character to be on the other receiving end of racism, and then boils down racism to be exclusively about skin color, completely ignoring the many other prejudiced factors and beliefs that shaped the unjust hatred of the time. It outright states that everyone views her as a person of color, but she is even MORE discriminated against than other people of color, because she is blue. But worst of all, the concluding message of the book is essentially "but she isn't a person of color, so stop treating her bad". To borrow the life experiences of people of color, water out the vicious depth and impact of that racism, and then end it with the horribly harmful takeaway: that the only thing wrong with that prejudice is that it's targeted at the wrong person? Disrespectful, to say the least.
I have no idea if this was the intended message of the book, or if it is an accurate depiction of the experiences of the blue fugates. But any intended message was shallow and half formed, any historical accuracy was spoken to unethically, and frankly I can't understand how anyone likes this book. I highly recommend to NOT pick this book up.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault