A review by amalas_bookstop
James by Percival Everett

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The easiest 5 stars I have given this year!

This book is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn through the perspective of Jim. From the start Percival Everett writes a Jim that is wise, but also cautious. The books starts with him teaching younger children how to live as slave in this world (how to stay under the radar, how to correct a white person while still making them believe they are right, etc.). From the beginning letting us know that the way they speak around white people is totally different than how they speak normally. Which I am eternally thankful for, because I hated reading Jims vernacular in Huckleberry Finn.

The book kept amazing pace amazingly well and in the end it almost read as a bit of a thriller (it has quite a bit of suspense). While Everett did change events of their adventures this came across as way more realistic to what would would have been for Jim to travel through the South. I saw this as an improvement. It was somewhat needed to give Jim a better character ark as he slowly shed the skin of slave and became James.

“I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.”

I totally recommend reading this after you read Huckleberry Finn, in fact schools should start recommending this as a package deal.
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