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A review by librarygurl
The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
4.0
It took me a while to get into this and I switched to the audiobook to finally finish. This books is really ideally an audiobook. Each chapter is a set of interviews from one specific character's point of view. The problem is that you only get one side of the interview. You don't see the interviewer, just the interviewee. It made reading it a bit of a struggle, but when listening to it I could get the right pauses and imagine the other side of the conversation.
That being said, while this story is simply about the rape of an English woman in India in WW2 era, it is so much more than that. This story is a great example of systematic racism, while male privilege, and the impact of colonialism. Each interviewee has to put context on what they are talking about. I was listening to this book when the Charleston, SC attack happened. It was an interesting parallel that made both events (book and life) resonate a bit deeper.
That being said, while this story is simply about the rape of an English woman in India in WW2 era, it is so much more than that. This story is a great example of systematic racism, while male privilege, and the impact of colonialism. Each interviewee has to put context on what they are talking about. I was listening to this book when the Charleston, SC attack happened. It was an interesting parallel that made both events (book and life) resonate a bit deeper.