The Known World by Edward P. Jones Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.00 You Save: $11.99 (71%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.26 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Known World
Book Review: This book has spoiled me for other books
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best-written novels I have ever read. When I go back to the novels I usually read - popular mystery, thriller, etc. they seem to me to be "plot plot plot". In "The Known World" there are characters and events happen to them. The characters seem extremely realistic. They don't just advance the plot, and yet it's not like there are boring passages that you are tempted to skip over.Book Review: Thought Provoking (3.5 Stars)
Summary: 4 Stars
Prior to reading this book, I had never considered that freed slaves owned their own people. The very thought of it haunted me throughout the book. Henry, the central character is mentored by his former owner, William Robbins and is very enterprising and ambitious. Ultimately, he buys many slaves and despite being very successful, he never shakes the shame of his father.
I thought the narrative was strong and stuck to the central theme well. It gives pause to think about people in many situations who ignore their better judgement and morals in the name of success.
There is much tragedy in the book and I think Jones is a competent writer and deals well with a very difficult topic.
Ultimately, I couldn't shake the idea that something seemed counterfeit about the story as told. I am at a loss for words except it was so matter of factly told that I would have expected more abuse of Henry by whites and blacks alike. The reactions of all to this situation seemed muted.
Int he end, this was a very interesting read and worth the time spent. I would give it a 3.5 star rating if one existed.
I recommend it but winning the Pulitzer, IMPAC and the National Book Critics Circle Award seems excessive praise for it.
Book Review: WOW!!! TALK ABOUT OUTSTANDING!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
FIRST--THE AUTHOR NEVER LETS YOU FORGET WHERE EACH CHARACTER FITS INTO THE STORY-LINE
ALL OF THE WAY THRU THE BOOK----YOU NEVER LOSE ANYBODY---IN RELATIONSHIP TO EVERYONE ELSE---
AND---THAT IS SSSSOOOO SWEET.
THE BOOK ITSELF WAS FANTASTIC---ALTHOUGH FICTION IT IS BASED ON A WORLD OF FACTS.
ON TO THE WRITING STYLE----IF I COULD WRITE LIKE THAT----I WOULD BE IN HEAVEN--PLAIN & SIMPLE.
WHAT I WAS SORRY ABOUT IS---I COULD ONLY GIVE IT 5 STARS MAX.---SHOULD HAVE BEEN 10 STARS, EASY.
I HAVE NOT KEPT A BOOK IN ?? ONE & A HALF ?? YEARS---A LOT OF CRAP READ---THIS IS A ""KEEPER"".
Book Review: Worthy but dull
Summary: 3 Stars
The scope of the novel and its structure of moving among a wide variety of plots and characters is fine, but I think Edward Jones doesn't really pull it off. Despite some compelling moments and illuminating descriptions of the social culture and living conditions of life in that time and place, I was left feeling indifferent. None of his characters seemed to draw me in - certainly they all had interesting and often tragic stories, but there is something superficial, and matter-of-fact in the way Jones writes about them that left me yawning. Perhaps it's a dry literary style in vogue in Pulitzer circles, but it lacks the warmth and soul to touch the heart as well as the mind.Book Review: Your entry to a magical, mysterious, heartbreaking world
Summary: 5 Stars
It's interesting that the reviews on this book are not unanimously positive. In my opinion, "The Known World" is a fabulous book that's worthy of every bit of praise it has received. It's an invention of more than characters; it's geography, history, folklore, genealogy, and sociology. Author Edward P. Jones has created a world full of mystery and magic and secrets, and yet one that's intensely human, too. It's almost impossible to put the book down.
I can only guess, based on a quick perusal of the commenters who gave the book a low score, that the book is too tough for some people.
To be sure, it's not an easy book. It jumps from one character's perspective to another on almost every third page, and it weaves tales together backwards and forwards over a period of about 40 years. It also tells the same story from several perspectives, as Faulkner would do, though here's more in the form of vignettes than in long descriptions. But Jones does a great job of reminding you who he's talking about, and why, much in the way Dickens would weave in a phrase when a character returned after a hundred pages.
Jones also uses another highly effective device that helps give the story a sweeping scale: When he concludes an incident, he then tells you in a sentence or two what happened to that person in subsequent decades. This technique plays effectively against the horrors that are a key component of the book because the look to the future shows that many of the victims were ultimately able to triumph in significant ways over the system in which they were raised.
So, what is the plotline? Well, it tells the tale of a rural (fictional) county in Virginia in the two decades before the Civil War. The most prominent character might be William Robbins, the most powerful man in the county, a white man with many slaves and a fairly generous attitude towards them. Or the most prominent might be Augustus Townsend, purchased by Robbins as a slave, but able to use his skills as a woodworker to purchase his freedom and then the freedom of the woman he loved and then their son, Henry. Henry Townsend also is a key character, as he becomes a slave-owning free black -- much to his father's shame and his wife's discomfort. The book begins on the day that Henry dies as a young married man with about 20 slaves and no heirs. Ultimately, Henry's wife Caldonia must decide if she will free her slaves, or if she will try to maintain her lifestyle in a system that she knows is wrong.
Caldonia was raised and educated as a free black woman, and she struggles to maintain her presence in the free world, while her instincts (and her brother) urge her to free the slaves. And then there's Moses, the first slave owned by Henry, who becomes the slave overseer (and therefore object of hate) on Henry's property, and who sees his chance for freedom lost when Caldonia won't leap the class chasm to free him or marry him after Henry's death. Caldonia's flirtation with Moses and decision not to free the slaves sets off a series of escape events that rattles Manchester County and presages the general unrest starting to sweep the nation. However, these events come near the end of the book and do not necessarily drive it; the power of the book is its descriptions of people and their thoughts and actions.
The people are unforgettable. There's wandering, crazy Alice, who turns out to be less crazy and more resourceful than she appeared. There's the good sheriff John Skeffington, whose efforts to deal evenhandedly with whites and blacks (free and slave) put in him in moral conflict again and again. There are the evil patrollers, who most are kept in check by Skeffington, but who have the power to ruin a slave's life in a moment of anger and jealousy.
The richness descriptions of the lives and thoughts and actions of each of these people is astonishing. The author reaches into their minds and hearts to show how they dealt with the astounding cruelty and contradictions of slavery. The slaves knew it was unfair and unjust, but they knew that rocking the boat would cost them dearly -- as several episodes of disfigurement, maintained their dignity as best as they could. The slaveowners knew that what they were doing wasn't right, but they didn't want to give up their power. So they fashioned rules and laws that made it tough for slaves to prove that they should be considered as humans, let alone equals --- bans on learning to read or write, bans on marriage, casual sales or rental of children to other slave holders, insistence on always being addressed as Master or Mister (never by first name), no allowance for a slave to ever come to the front door, etc. It was a warped existence, and everyone sensed that it was on borrowed time, but no one could really foresee in an isolated community how or when it would end. And one of the magic parts of this book is that it doesn't address how it ended; it just writes about life before the Civil War, and it reflects back on folks who survived the war, but without telling their tales of survival.
If you're looking to dive deeply into a new world, read this book. To anyone with any knowledge of American history, it will feel both familiar and bizarre at the same time. The cruelty of slavery is familiar, and yet understanding how slave and slavemaster felt -- especially free blacks who rose to prominence through their efforts -- has never been told with such depth and feeling.