The Known World by Edward P. Jones Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Known World
Book Review: A world previously unknown
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Known World" introduces us to a world previously unknown to most of us. It is the story of blacks freed from slavery who came to own slaves themselves. The book offers a detailed account of how a handful of slaves were able to buy their freedom through their special skills as carpenters, builders, artists, and agronomists that allowed them to earn cash from off-the-plantation enterprises. The cost was high. They had to pay "market value" for their own freedom as well as the price demanded for their wives and children. However, the Southern slave culture was so strong, so deeply embedded in both blacks and whites, that it was not considered odd or ironic when freed blacks became slave holders themselves.
The book is written in an unusual rambling style, like an account of old folks sitting around the fire, full of digressions, sudden pauses, recollections, and a plethora of characters, some of whom are difficult to recall. the story is, nevertheless, absorbing, enlightening and a hell of a good read.
Readers would be well served to look up the "Cast of Characters" at the back of the book. It will help greatly in recalling who is who, who is related to whom and whether they were slave or free.
Book Review: Amazing Potential, Lackluster Overall
Summary: 2 Stars
A black slave owner, his wife, a freed slave, a sheriff, an overseer of a plantation, and a supposedly insane woman: these are just a few of the characters that are central to "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. This novel centrally focuses on Henry Townsend, the black slave owner, and the repercussions of his death in his tiny rural community of Manchester, Virginia and the world around him.
The author weaves a tangled web among the characters that shows us how interconnected our lives are, even if it seems we are alone in the world. For each action there is an equal an opposite reaction in physics and also in "The Known World." Henry's death leaves his plantation and all its inhabitants in the hands of his widowed wife, Caldonia. Caldonia is a fair and level headed woman, but she is not used to having so much pressure and responsibility. Slowly but surely, the plantation begins to crumble around her.
Although the story later becomes more linear, there are multiple flashbacks throughout the beginning of the novel. Each character that is introduced has a lengthy back story full of information that helps us learn more about their personality and why they do the things they do. To me, these flashbacks felt like subtext that should have been left to the reader's interpretation. There is also quit a bit of foreshadowing, which is very specific. Jones tells the reader exactly when, where, and how the character died, even if said character was born a few paragraphs earlier. Later in the book the deaths of these people are even further explained. All this information was distracting and muddled what could have been a very interesting storyline. Instead, the plot becomes harder and harder to follow.
While the topic of a black slave owner is interesting and raises quite a few moral dilemmas that the reader must make their own opinion about, the book is not satisfying. After finishes "The Known World" I was not satisfied. The ending just seems to drop off in and forget its main protagonists. The tone is dry, and it is quite a struggle to keep all of the smaller stories straight without having to flip to the back for the handy character guide. It is hard to really get into the story when one is constantly trying to remember who someone is and why they are important.
I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for an engrossing read. It is hard to find a central storyline and once one thinks they have found one, it simply disappears and one is introduced to a whole new batch of people. The story is uninteresting, while the topic could have made for a great read, "The Known World" simply falls short of its potential.
Book Review: An Unknown Truth
Summary: 4 Stars
Edward Jones has written an intricate and well-plotted novel with "The Known World". Once again, the reader is reminded of the insidiousness of slavery, but this time from another angle. As he says in the interview following the novel's text, the number of blacks who owned slaves was probably very small, given that most people are unaware of the fact that blacks did, in fact, do so. Nevertheless, the fact that a free black would "own" another points out the depths to which slavery was accepted and condoned by Southern society, and further illustrates why ending it met with such resistance. Aside from occasionally awkward phrasing, and the method Jones uses to inform the reader about each character's fate (a method that becomes annoying by the novel's end), "The Known World" is one of the best examples of American fiction to come my way in quite a while.Book Review: An interesting and fresh take on the genre with fantastic writing to boot (4.5 stars)
Summary: 4 Stars
The Known World is a complex morality piece set in the Antebellum South in and around the mid 19th century. The story takes place in Manchester county, Virginia and primarily focuses on the slaves and slave owners lives all centered around the death of a prominent slave owner who is himself an African American.
The writing is rich and the content is heavy. As a reader you become immersed in the various points of view that shift through multiple characters and time periods. Jones is exceptional at making the feelings and atmosphere ooze of the page and his characters are complex yet realistic.
My favorite aspect of the novel is the complexity involved from a moral standpoint. You have black slave owners to white abolitionists whose welfare is dependent on slavery. Jones doesn't take the easy way out and there are no easy answers. Characters behave admirably in some situations abhorrently in others but always with purpose.
This novel is not an easy read and I wouldn't recommend it for light readers. After the first 30 pages, I had to start over, literally writing down notes about characters and lineage because it became too much to remember every time I put the book down.
Bottom Line: This book won the Pulitzer a few years back and it is a must read for people interested in the subject and historical fiction.
Book Review: Beautifully written
Summary: 5 Stars
Jones has written a classic, one which looks carefully at the always incendiary topic of race in America. He focuses on an unusual couple of freed blacks who owned their own slaves in Manchester County, VA. Throughout the book, the reader is exposed to the complicated relationships between this couple, Henry and Caldonia Townsend, their slaves, a white neighbor, and the county officials. Jones' tone is consistently unsympathetic, straightforward, and unsentimental. His dialogue between characters is beautifully crafted, funny at times, painful at others, but always worth re-reading. Stories within stories unfold and double back upon each other. The richness of the characters is revealed by the reader's changing reactions throughout the book, at times loathing a character and, just a few pages later, feeling sympathy toward him.