Scan barcode
A review by edgeworth
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
1.0
"Jaunty children's pirate adventure story" plus "the dark and brutal heart of children." I understand the clashing tones are the whole point of the book, but Hughes doesn't meld them together well at all and the result is a messy failure. It's far too waffling, meandering in and out of the authorial voice and the viewpoints of both adults and children; I found my attention straying constantly. One of the poorly-sketched child characters actually dies about a quarter into the novel and I was so half asleep that I didn't realise this had happened until the end, when the parents ask where their son is.
Oh, and Hughes wrote the book in a depressive period in his late twenties when his engagement had been broken off and he had, as the Guardian puts it, taken to "borrowing" his friend's children. That, plus the bordering-on-erotic descriptions of a pre-pubescent girl, was enough to give me the willies.
Oh, and Hughes wrote the book in a depressive period in his late twenties when his engagement had been broken off and he had, as the Guardian puts it, taken to "borrowing" his friend's children. That, plus the bordering-on-erotic descriptions of a pre-pubescent girl, was enough to give me the willies.