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A review by joss
The Lamplighter by Jackie Kay
4.0
This is an incredible telling of the horrors and evils of slavery. Crafted from true accounts, intricately researched and hauntingly raw and honest. It is absolutely horrific to read, and incredibly sad, though that word doesn’t really cut it at all.
It’s so difficult to review, or give a star rating to a piece of work such as this one. It doesn’t feel right. It should simply be marked as important and essential reading.
I loved the way in which the story was shared between the main women - the idea that the individual story was also universal to each slave really came through. Often it felt more like a poetry reading with many voices, and at other times, it felt more like prose.
My only real criticism is the amount of repetition in this, which could sometimes feel somewhat gimmicky, but it also contributed to the feeling of the one story being several stories, so sometimes it made sense for lines to be repeated.
I thought this was an incredible play - the form of performance entirely brings the reader or audience into this story, or reality, in ways I haven’t experienced before. This needed to be written, and I’m so thankful that it was.
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I received an ARC on NetGalley - all opinions are my own.
It’s so difficult to review, or give a star rating to a piece of work such as this one. It doesn’t feel right. It should simply be marked as important and essential reading.
I loved the way in which the story was shared between the main women - the idea that the individual story was also universal to each slave really came through. Often it felt more like a poetry reading with many voices, and at other times, it felt more like prose.
My only real criticism is the amount of repetition in this, which could sometimes feel somewhat gimmicky, but it also contributed to the feeling of the one story being several stories, so sometimes it made sense for lines to be repeated.
I thought this was an incredible play - the form of performance entirely brings the reader or audience into this story, or reality, in ways I haven’t experienced before. This needed to be written, and I’m so thankful that it was.
-
I received an ARC on NetGalley - all opinions are my own.