RaveSlateMany books are written as if feeling a lot of sympathy is enough to keep the reader on the right side of history, but Marlon James doesn’t play that game. His second novel...is not a redemption narrative ... Page after page, in small ways and large, James made me realize how rote and well-established my emotional responses are ... This epic, beautiful, complicated, enthralling book...raises an obvious question: Who the hell were these white people? They weren’t aberrant sadists—they constituted basically the entire white population of their communities ... James inspires courage of imagination, he has traversed light and darkness, he has traversed centuries, and he has traversed gender ... this is also a book about how the indomitable human impulses toward kindness, love, friendship, family, and loyalty are warped so absolutely in a slave’s life as to make a mockery of them. It is also, surprisingly, a heartbreaking love story, of a man and woman haltingly trying, and mostly failing, to overcome their status of slave and master.
