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A review by johndomc
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
5.0
English kids growing up in Jamaica. Their parents decide eventually that something must be done for them: they must go to school in England. So the kids get shipped on a steamer, which is promptly captured by pirates. The kids take to the seas.
Memorable phrases. At night the kids in their room convene "the Parliament of Beds."
"...dominated with the easy empire of nightmare."
"...and all with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one's own especial pleasure..."
Watching adults get progressively more drunk: "The expression of their faces became more candid, and yet more mask-like: hiding less, there was also less to hide."
Something cavalier about the writing. A little bit wild-eyed.
Emily, the oldest, awe-inspiring to the Liddlies. Untouchable. "The cleverest! The muscles of a giant, the ancient experience of a serpent!" !
Hughes writes from the height of a kid.
"Emily omitted to wash, since there seemed such a hurry, but made up for it by spending an unusually long time over her prayers. She pressed her eyeballs devoutly with her fingers to make sparks appear, in spite of the slightly sick feeling it always induced: and then, already sound asleep, clambered, I suppose, into bed."
Memorable phrases. At night the kids in their room convene "the Parliament of Beds."
"...dominated with the easy empire of nightmare."
"...and all with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one's own especial pleasure..."
Watching adults get progressively more drunk: "The expression of their faces became more candid, and yet more mask-like: hiding less, there was also less to hide."
Something cavalier about the writing. A little bit wild-eyed.
Emily, the oldest, awe-inspiring to the Liddlies. Untouchable. "The cleverest! The muscles of a giant, the ancient experience of a serpent!" !
Hughes writes from the height of a kid.
"Emily omitted to wash, since there seemed such a hurry, but made up for it by spending an unusually long time over her prayers. She pressed her eyeballs devoutly with her fingers to make sparks appear, in spite of the slightly sick feeling it always induced: and then, already sound asleep, clambered, I suppose, into bed."