The Known World

Rating:
Summary: Can't go wrong with this book
Review: I read this book as a requirement for a college course I am taking. At first I didn't think I was going to like it, but the book moved me as I read it and continues to do so after I finished it.

Also, I think it is important to note that this is Edward P. Jones' first novel and he won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

This sort of book is not normally my "cup of tea," but it is definitely worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing, simply amazing . . .
Review: What an eye-opener this book was for me. The writing is right up there with other great novels and the story is highly unusual.

Also recommended: McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD

Rating:
Summary: Ok but I have read better including his short story book
Review: I felt like Edward Jones lost the focus of the novel. The first half was much better than the second half of the book. I really had to push myself to finish it. His short story collection I highly recommend it is definitely worthshile reading. This novel did teach me a fact thought that some African-Americans owned slaves before the Civil War which is something I never knew about. So it is a interesting novel but I think it missed the mark.

Rating:
Summary: Mystified too.
Review: Based on good reviews and an interesting subject, our book club selected this book last month. We are a group of college educated professionals -- many with masters degrees -- and to a person, we can't fathom why this book received so many accolades. The author obviously spent a great deal of time researching the subject, but it appeared that he wanted to use every fact he found just for the sake of using it. The result was a confusing montage of disjointed storylines based on facts the author uncovered. Add shifting timelines and sentences that seemed to ramble on forever, and the result was this was the first book that no one in the book club finished reading. We decided that the author is probably a fine short story writer but lacking in the technique that makes a good novelist. This book was a disappointment to us.

Rating:
Summary: A dissent from all the accolades....
Review: First of all, I'll admit I gave up after 100 pages, but I think that's a fair trial. I suppose I see what Jones is trying to do with his incessant time traveling--show the historic and personal effects of slavery as an institutional network that traversed the "known world" across time and space. Or at least that's what I think he's trying to do. This may be an interesting and creative approach (the two stars are for effort), but extremely uninspiring and uninvolving--and very annoying--in its execution. Vonnegut did it better in "Slaughterhouse Five". "The Known World" is yet another book that impresses critics and wins awards with its high-concept literary pyrotechnics, but has no story and no people that really capture one's imagination. It has, one will excuse the expression, very little soul. The book left me cold. I'll stick with Baldwin, Morrison, Wideman, Angelou, Walker, and--especially on the subject of slavery--Frederick Douglass.

Rating:
Summary: Isn't it ironic? Don't ya think?
Review: Talk about eye-opening (perhaps mostly because I'm white and hispanic), that phrase doesn't even begin to describe the provocative insights Jones delivers in this wonderful novel. With total mastery (no pun intended), without preaching or condescension, Jones shines a cold spotlight on the institution of slavery and especially on the mindset required to keep such a thorn in the side of so many black Americans for so long in our so-called "nation under God."

While Jones is not a wordsmith on the level of Shakespeare or even, say, Michael Faber or Ian McEwan here, and the occasional word or turn of phrase might jar the ear of an old English school marm, the simplicity of the prose fits like a glove, and the vividness of the many horrifying incidents more than adequately compensates.

Of course, it's not without fault. As Jonathan Yardley accurately observed in his glowing review for Washington Post Book World ...

"The novel is ... immensely populous -- at moments one wishes for a scorecard to keep up with all the people -- but it has no central character."

That is my only real criticism. It is hard to keep up at times. The story demands your attention and is best read in larger, rather than smaller doses, to better keep up with all the characters and how they fit in. A family tree in the opening pages may have helped. But no matter, the real central character is slavery itself and its many accompanying and enabling contradictions.

While one finds traces (or at least the influences) of Faulkner and Marquez and Morrison here, Jones' voice seems to be unique, and to me, at least, derives most of its power from a deft use of irony and juxtaposition. It is an irony that comes in all shades and sizes, from ironic character names like Moses and ironic characters like black preachers, to the still greater irony of "free" blacks owning their own black slaves. One of the more interesting characters is the sheriff, John Skiffington, a Christian man who regularly reads the Bible, tries to do the right thing and interprets and enforces the law as morally as he knows how. Skiffington marries a college-educated northern liberal white woman who is put off by the idea of owning a slave, but when the couple receive a 9-year-old girl as a "wedding present," they quickly adjust to antebellum Southern living. Skiffington struggles with his views and a variety of emotions, but in the end serves to reveal that the main problem with slavery is that because it was government endorsed, it was next to impossible for people with even the best of intentions to ever do the right thing. Everyone, whether they owned slaves or not comes out a villain. It was even harder when the law -- which men like Skiffington (or worse, men like his cousin "Counsel") enforce -- has to take sides between masters and their "property," regardless of the colors involved.

This is a book that will undoubtedly inspire a thousand dissertations, but don't be put off, it is no history or sociology text. It is a powerful story, a page turner that the average eighth grader can read and understand, most high schoolers can enjoy and you won't want to put down. But you will also want to savor it, not just lick your way through it. There are no stereotypes here and a great deal to think about. What is particularly interesting is how easily, without any exposition at all, Jones gives us greater insights into the plight and mindset of modern black Americans by depicting their history. And while I'm sure there is plenty of anger under the surface, Jones doesn't let it show. His view is detached, even somewhat morally ambiguous at times.

Bravo, Edward P. Jones!! You've written a novel that I'm sure will be found alongside "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Absalom, Absalom!" and "Beloved" 200 or 300 years from now. It is easily the best and most thought-provoking novel I've read in many years, and will surely become an American classic.

Rating:
Summary: This book clings to the reader.
Review: As I approached the final pages of this book, I found myself already mourning the moment I'd put it down. The author's engaging style belies the depth of the message: that a slave-master relationship is impossibly inhuman.. yet it happened.. and was, in fact, a building block of the Southern economy. Jones creates characters that are wholly in the moment, yet with their pasts and futures simultaneously filling out their portrait. It's never confusing. The injustice Jones relays in this tale is shameful and heartbreaking. An unforgettable book, that I will turn to again for greater insight on re-reading.

Rating:
Summary: An uneasy situation
Review: It's the 1850s, and Henry Townsend, a freed black man, owns and manages a small plantation in Virginia with 33 slaves. Set against Henry's experiences are those of William Robbins, his previous master/owner, and the relationship between Townsend and Robbins is particularly well wrought. While not possessing the power of the white ruling class, the freed Negroes believed that, for them, it was just a matter of waiting it out. But as Henry lies dying, he worries about what will be come of his holdings after he is gone. Turns out, he has good reason for concern. The Known World explores the bonds of slavery and ownership and how those bonds affect all who are touched by them. This uneasy kaleidoscopic debut novel focuses on difficult moral subjects, and it does so masterfully and with depth and compassion. Superb.

Rating:
Summary: Mystified in McLean
Review: It's difficult for me to understand the critical acclaim, and resulting commercial success, that this story has received. Sure, it's built around an interesting premise (black slave owners) and obviously involved substantial research, but there are serious stylist flaws that made it a difficult and distracting read for me.

While some authors are able to employ shifting points of view and out-of-sequence plotting to enhance the thematic and emotional appeal of a story (The Hours by Cunningham being a fine recent example) these techniques are employed so sloppily here that it becomes a huge distraction. The lengthy recitations of family trees, population statistics and other historical fodder further interrupt the flow. As if sensing the reader's difficulty in keeping track of the characters, the author (or more likely his editor) feels compelled to affix silly tags to characters like "the Night Walker" and "the seeker of young stuff" when they pop up again after some unwelcomed detour or another.

Mr. Jones's dialogue and descriptive passages are at times quite satisfying, and one can only hope that he'll find a more coherent narrative structure to showcase his talents in future endeavors.

Rating:
Summary: A different slant on supposed historical norms...
Review: Superbly crafted book about a little known subject. That of free Blacks owning slaves during the days of slavery. When he dies, Henry Townsend owns over 30 slaves, he was a free man of colour who crossed a line that perhaps should never have been crossed, but it is from a White man that Henry has "learnt" the art of owning slaves. Henry's former master William Robbins took great pride in teaching Henry everything there was to know about slavery, and in a strangely warped sort of way, he was a surrogate parent to Henry, but at the expense of Henry's real parents who had managed to buy their own freedom but not of their child.

This book is not an easy read, there are many characters, some more important than others, and there is an underlying current of lives both Black and White intertwining in the strangest of ways.

With Henry's death comes change, and through the eyes of Moses, one of Henry's slaves we taste life through a Black on Black experience.

The irony and the strangeness of this novel's storyline are totally self-evident. A man who has gained his freedom in turn enslaves others. What are his reasons? What if anything is he trying to prove? These are just a few of the questions you will be asking yourself as you make your way through this oddly compelling read.

You cannot help but feel a combination of compassion and contempt for Henry, and as the story winds to its oddly unfinished climax, you can't help wondering who owned who, and if the power that William Robbins thought he had over his protege was actually something quite reversed.

This is not a "coffee table book"; it is a book that is meant to be read. Worth taking on holiday, but only if you are going somewhere where you can sit in the shade and take your time over each and every single page....