Rating: 
Summary: Knowing The Known World
Review: This is a wonderful, sad but essential book about the slave years around 1855 in Manchester County Virginia.
The story is woven like a handmade quilt telling of the past and future, the comings and going, the births and deaths of slaves, masters and free slave masters.
The characters seem eternal. Jones embeds information about their deaths in the middle of a scene from their lives. Even minor characters that are mentioned just once are given a detail of their lives to flesh them out.
The language is like poetry; the land one of the characters. 'The land seemed incapable of growing anything but sorrow.'
Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for this book. It should be required reading in high schools or college. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and compelling
Review: Incredibly crafted and compelling, "The Known World" does a lot of things, but disappoint is not one of them. I was prepared to find just a "good story" when I purchased this book. What I got instead was a tour-de-force piece of literature. I agree with another reviewer in that Edward P. Jones is in the same league as Steinbeck or any of the other greats. The writing is beautiful and the story is one of the most unusual I've run across. So few books veer off the beaten path, but the few that do pack a wallop. Don't miss this one.Also recommended: THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD
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Summary: Open the Canon
Review: Outstanding. I, too, believed from the first word. Five weeks later, I finished this book. The conversation here, and the characters, bolted me in upright in aisle. The enormous depth of the text makes it imperative that one take his time. Jones' voice is as lucid, languid and comforting as that of any canonized author of an American letter. In his artful portrayal of what ranks amongst America's most forgotten and dismissed secrets, Jones added a whole new dimension-- a new world-- of thought in the process. I am affected by it, and I am still nearly speechless but the beauty of the work. Many thanks, Mr. Jones, for making the world a bit better and a bit more complete.
Rating:
Summary: More stars if possible
Review: Absolutely one of the most artfully crafted fiction books I've read in years. Incredible and deserves every award it has received. Bravo Mr. Jones and I hope you're hard at work on your next book.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Miss It!
Review: This book is rich in images and color. It gives a glimse of slavery that has been seldom portrayed and it will really make you think. The rich prose is filled with vivid descriptions that make this book hard to put down. Debbie Farmer, author of 'Don't Put Lipstick on the Cat'
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Summary: The Peculiar Institution
Review: The Known World feels like a book that took a long time to write. The writing proceeds at a slow but churning pace. Jones meticulously ties each character to one another, to the land, to the curious circumstances of the "peculiar institution" of slavery. We are taught in school that slavery was a black and white affair, but Jones takes great pains to describe a human landscape where such distinctions are blurry: the most powerful man in Manchester County, William Robbins, dotes upon the two children he has fathered with his slave, Philomena; Oden, the Indian, exaggerates his cruelty towards blacks to maintain his tenuous superiority; and Henry Townsend, the gifted young black man at the center of this novel, acquires a plantation full of slaves from which discord flows, imperceptibly at first. The lesson is the messiness of slavery made real by the vivid lives of each character. Over the course of the novel, Jones sketches out each character, from birth to death, using deft flashbacks and flash-forwards that are scattered throughout like crumbs and give the book a marvelous depth. In this sense, the book reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. The book ends before the Civil War begins, and so the triumph of good over evil is not allowed to mitigate the brutal picture of slavery that Jones paints. Perhaps because it was so assiduously researched, this novel feels like history and it feels like life. Here's hoping that Jones' next one doesn't take ten years to write.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing characters, compelling plot
Review: With "The Known World," Edward Jones does a nice job of creating characters and a haunting setting that drive the story, rather than vice-versa. You're drawn into their world in an acutely visceral way. A dynamic debut from a writer with a bright future. If you're into writers like Jones, Michael Chabon, Norman Mailer, etc. (i.e., writers who weave jarring tales of oppression), then there's a new writer you should check out: Greg Ippolito. His new novel, "Zero Station," is absolutely terrific, and an excerpt is available for FREE. He's still a relative unknown (a friend turned me onto his work)...but this is a must-read. You can check him out and read the excerpt at: www.ZERO-STATION.net. Don't miss it!
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Summary: An Odd Cover?
Review: I own this book and I'm looking forward to reading it, so don't take this review as negative criticism, but the one thing I find odd about it, is that it has the same Eudora Welty photograph as used on the Vintage International edition of Faulkner's "Go Down, Moses". How could the editor or publisher miss this? Couldn't they have found another photo to use?
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Summary: Haven't read it!
Review: Don't listen to my review cuz I haven't read this book so I haven't got a clue. But I would like to recommend Charles Johnson's Oxherding Tale- one of the best books I've ever read, about similar subject matter. Somehow I doubt this book is as good, but I can't know till I read it. Baldwin is also great but Angelou and Walker are hacks & Morrison is very overrated. In the intro to Oxherding Tale Charles Johnson speaks how if you were a black man in the '80's then you were completely overlooked next to the Morrissons, the Walkers and Angelou's & I get the impression that he did not think too highly of The Color Purple. Neither did I- great minds do think alike, I guess. :P
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Summary: Pulitzer for this One
Review: I read too many things about America's past. Vietnam, slavery and Nazis.They have some charm to keep me reading and watching them. I'm halfway through this book and it's safe to conclude that this book is worth the Pulitzer it won just yesterday.
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