The Known World

Rating:
Summary: So understated and so powerful
Review: The Known World has received so much aclaim, and rightly so. It is an amazing piece of writing that manages to capture the tragedy and moral complexity of slavery and the attitudes prevalent in the south during that time. Before I had read the book, based on the reviews, I expected a difficult, emotional read. What I found however, was Jones' matter of fact style is so understated that it is easy to skim over some of the most gut-wrenching elements of the story. And that is the book's power. It may not make sense reading this review, but the way that Jones enables the reader to just pass over things actually drives the point home even further than had he been more explicit in his attempt to draw an emotional response. It also enables him to convey the contradictions that were prevalent in the thinking of the time. This is a powerful book and a must read for every American who wants to understand our full history.

Rating:
Summary: Tedious Beyond Endurance
Review: I finished Chapter 1 and found that I had "met" dozens of characters and hop-scotched among several decades of parents and progeny. I should have made notes. No, I shouldn't have. That's not how I want to read fiction, no way, no how.

A lot of "reviewers" like the book. I did not and didn't start Chapter 2. The local library can have my copy.


Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Effort
Review:
Set in the 1830's The Known World is a story of Henry and Caldonia Townsend, two educated black slave owners in Manchester County, Virginia. This is no doubt an important novel because it deals with one of the unique complexities of slavery - black slave ownership. As he tells of the Townsend saga from slavery to freedom to prosperity to decline author Edward P. Jones paints a vivid landscape of time and characters.

I enjoyed The Known World though I had to work very hard to get there. I had difficulty getting into sync with Jones' narrative style. Perhaps it was the number of characters he kept introducing or perhaps it was his constant shifting of time that kept me off balance. But I was never able to get into a flow where the pages just swept me along. However, in the end the novel did succeed in touching a range of human emotions and capturing the feel of that turbulent period of American history. And that made the effort worthwhile.


Rating:
Summary: How to leave the known world behind
Review: This novel has such a masterful way of piling up details to create a world so real it has a smell and taste as you walk through it, like the massive maps created by crazy Alice at the end of the story. When we read about "slavery" in history books it seems so simple and wrong, so easy to navigate and judge in terms of monsters and victims; but in this telling, selling and putting to work fellow people is part of a morally hazy and rationalized complex of human relations, a system that is all-enveloping. Characters are troubled by feelings that this way of life is somehow unacceptable and yet inescapable; everyone seems trapped by an inability to imagine and create an alternative to "The Known World," and there is no way for a single individual to opt out of the system. Where Jones is absolutely amazing is his ability to sketch in a fully-developed personality with a few details; further, all of the characters recognize each other's intellegence and humanity even as they sell each other as property.

The Known World also connects us back to a rural, small world most of us have never really had contact with ---- whether its the man who can taste the weather and what the crops will need in a pinch of field soil, or the length of time and difficulty it takes to travel ten miles on a mule-drawn wagon; most of the characters have not been outside of three Virginia counties where the story takes place. Travel from one estate to another takes most of the day and thus visiting is not somthing to be taken lightly or passed over quickly. I suggest you keep this in mind when meandering through this brilliant, dense book.

Rating:
Summary: Stick with it and you'll find your reward!
Review: The Known World by Edward P Jones was a wonderful read! Lengthy, I don't think it's possible to write a brief overview of the book but I'll try. Basically, it is the story of slave era Manchester County, Virginia where there are - wow - black slave owners. Also amongst the brilliance of this story are a God-fearing sheriff, an indian overseer, free colored people, a fair-skinned colored teacher, the mixed race children of a fierce slave owner who are dear to his heart, and an array of other characters. Though I would have to say that there are many many characters, it wasn't confusing to me (a person who eats detail up). I think most people are put off because Jones gives each character a name regardless of their importance to the story. Some are only mentioned briefly, but they are still identified by name. I think this story is a winner! It deserves every nomination and award it has received. I couldn't put it down I was so engulfed in the story. It's worth adding to your personal library. It was definitely refreshing and now that I'm finished with it I'll be hard pressed to find another novel that can meet or beat it's standard. Way to go Edward Jones - keep it up (I'll be keeping an eye peeled for his next novel)!

Rating:
Summary: An epic novel about Slavery and moral confusion
Review: Edward P. Jones' "The Known World (KW)", the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner, is an epic novel about slavery in the years immediately preceding the American Civil War. Unlike other epic novels set in the same era like "Cold Mountain", KW doesn't have a real protagonist because Jones' interest extends beyond telling a story about individual lives. His subject is Slavery and in choosing to examine a curious and little known phenomenon of free blacks owning un-free blacks, he sets up the perfect vehicle for exploring the corrupting influence of this pernicious social paradigm on the morals of otherwise decent human beings.

Henry Townsend, the novel's nominal hero whose early and untimely death is anticipated in its first pages, thinks he can be a more humane slave owner once he buys his own freedom and becomes a slave owner himself. He doesn't live long enough to see his "property" fall apart and dissipate under the hapless management of his widow Caldonia. Using the detached voice of an omniscient narrator, Jones weaves together an intricate tapestry of interconnected anecdotes involving a huge cast of characters - too many to keep track of - to reveal the horrors of slavery and the moral confusion it brings to its subjects. His characters, black and white, struggle unsuccessfully to give expression to their humanity because the legal dictates of slavery and the code of behaviour it enforces on its subjects are unnatural and run counter to their instincts. This sense of moral confusion is clearly evident in the choices facing Fern Elston and the Sheriff, but most poignantly conveyed in the tentative coupling of Caldonia and her overseer Moses, whose affair is doomed not to survive their legal relationship of owner and owned when the chips are down.

Jones' narrative voice is calm and controlled throughout, accentuating by way of ironical inference the abnormality of human relationships under slavery . His anecdotes are moving and heartfelt though not always memorable - there are a couple we could do without, like the one detailing Counsel's long sojourn across the country, - though his tendency for under-dramatisation only serves to heighten the impact of those that resonate. There is none more tender than the story of Elias and Celeste, nor one more heartbreaking than that of August who bought his freedom only to be sold back to slavery when his papers disappear down the throat of a white rogue patroller. The novel ends on an uplifting note offering hope and a future to the lucky few who escaped the system.

"The Known World" is classic American literature, a novel that will be read by many for years to come.