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A review by lindsbian
When Will This Cruel War Be Over?: The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864 by Barry Denenberg
slow-paced
0.0
I’m honestly lost for words at how bad this book was. Other reviews said most of it, except comparing it to Jr Gone With the Wind is an insult to Gone With the Wind - that book at least led to something good with Hattie McDaniel gaining prominence for her performance in the movie. This book doesn’t even have that.
The characters are all completely unlikable people. I was cautious at the beginning because I hoped there would be character development, since the POV character Emma goes on about how good slave owners her family is. Maybe she would listen to and learn to humanize one of the people her family enslaves? But no, absolutely none. Not even the epilogue indicates she ever grew with the times. And passing this off as historical accuracy is ludicrous - as others have mentioned, Emma’s family apparently teaches the enslaved children to read and write. In Virginia. Which like most Confederate states, made this illegal. Apparently the author never heard of this law or the 1854 memoir “Educational Laws of Virginia: The Personal Narrative of Mrs. Margaret Douglass, a Southern Woman, who was Imprisoned for One Month in the Common Jail of Norfolk, Under the Laws of Virginia, for the Crime of Teaching Free Colored Children to Read” (long title but it really says it all, doesn’t it!) A plot like that of Margaret Crittendon Douglas where they broke the law could have actually made this book interesting. Instead, like other reviewers have said, nothing happens!
If the author really wanted to be historically accurate in depicting a Confederate family, a more sympathetic story could have centered around a more average white slave owning family - or slavery sympathizers who themselves were poor. Instead, Emma’s family has a massive plantation with an unspecified large number of people enslaved (but all treated well! trust the unreliable narrator!) - which bizarrely, the writing refers to as the family’s “servants.” The family are in fact slave owners and Emma mentions slavery so I don’t know why she shies away and calls them servants. It’s very strange and ahistorical.
The writer didn’t have to do any of this. It’s not historically accurate and it’s not a good story even remotely. It’s so strange to read this after rereading “A Picture of Freedom,” an actually amazing Dear America book that both accurately portrays horrors of slavery and also presents MULTIPLE sympathetic characters who are white family members of slave owners. That book did more in its epilogue in a sentence or two with the son of the family who enslaved Clotee than this book does in its entire uneventful plodding excuse of a plot.
I can’t believe this author decided to write this book from the Confederate POV with so little story to tell and such gross racism left unquestioned. It’s probably not impossible to write a good story from the POV of a white slaveowner, but it’s a daunting task for him to have chosen - and failed spectacularly at. For anyone who wants to try to do so now, at least this book can serve as a great How To guide - just avoid basically everything it did! Especially avoid including blatant white supremacist rhetoric left completely unquestioned. Again, use the epilogue or something if you have to, since then the character can have a whole lifetime for character development and social progress that leads to the acceptable views of the time changing.
The characters are all completely unlikable people. I was cautious at the beginning because I hoped there would be character development, since the POV character Emma goes on about how good slave owners her family is. Maybe she would listen to and learn to humanize one of the people her family enslaves? But no, absolutely none. Not even the epilogue indicates she ever grew with the times. And passing this off as historical accuracy is ludicrous - as others have mentioned, Emma’s family apparently teaches the enslaved children to read and write. In Virginia. Which like most Confederate states, made this illegal. Apparently the author never heard of this law or the 1854 memoir “Educational Laws of Virginia: The Personal Narrative of Mrs. Margaret Douglass, a Southern Woman, who was Imprisoned for One Month in the Common Jail of Norfolk, Under the Laws of Virginia, for the Crime of Teaching Free Colored Children to Read” (long title but it really says it all, doesn’t it!) A plot like that of Margaret Crittendon Douglas where they broke the law could have actually made this book interesting. Instead, like other reviewers have said, nothing happens!
If the author really wanted to be historically accurate in depicting a Confederate family, a more sympathetic story could have centered around a more average white slave owning family - or slavery sympathizers who themselves were poor. Instead, Emma’s family has a massive plantation with an unspecified large number of people enslaved (but all treated well! trust the unreliable narrator!) - which bizarrely, the writing refers to as the family’s “servants.” The family are in fact slave owners and Emma mentions slavery so I don’t know why she shies away and calls them servants. It’s very strange and ahistorical.
The writer didn’t have to do any of this. It’s not historically accurate and it’s not a good story even remotely. It’s so strange to read this after rereading “A Picture of Freedom,” an actually amazing Dear America book that both accurately portrays horrors of slavery and also presents MULTIPLE sympathetic characters who are white family members of slave owners. That book did more in its epilogue in a sentence or two with the son of the family who enslaved Clotee than this book does in its entire uneventful plodding excuse of a plot.
I can’t believe this author decided to write this book from the Confederate POV with so little story to tell and such gross racism left unquestioned. It’s probably not impossible to write a good story from the POV of a white slaveowner, but it’s a daunting task for him to have chosen - and failed spectacularly at. For anyone who wants to try to do so now, at least this book can serve as a great How To guide - just avoid basically everything it did! Especially avoid including blatant white supremacist rhetoric left completely unquestioned. Again, use the epilogue or something if you have to, since then the character can have a whole lifetime for character development and social progress that leads to the acceptable views of the time changing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and War