Sherry F. (sherryfair) reviewed on 9/8/2005 + 55 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

This Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel requires patience and a willingness to follow a narrative that's nonlinear. It also helps if you keep the list of characters in the back material nearby, since the book is heavily populated. The prose style's got overtones of the King James Bible. If you like Faulkner and Toni Morrison's "Beloved," the book may appeal to you. I was also reminded a bit of E.L. Doctorow's "Rag Time." But the attraction for me was the structure and telling. It's the story of a whole community and traces how everyone's lives are intertwined. Thus, everyone bears some responsibility for what happens. There are no easy moral judgments here. People who are a very complex mix of good and bad do unbearable things to one another here. This subtle, cumulative condemnation of slavery for the way it warped thinking and behavior is extremely powerful. And the nonlinear telling reminded me of hearing some kind of oral rendition. As if a storyteller within the community had started by trying to give one person's history, but found himself continually led off on associations to further fascinating anecdotes, thinking of this and then of that, leaping from that person's appearance to that person's eventual fate or death, sometimes giving the highlights of a whole life within one paragraph. Which is why it requires patience, because one story sets off another. In the end, they are all related. There are also some magical and supernatural elements in the book, as there always must be, in such tellings. A brilliant book, but not for everyone, because of this very large cast and the many tangents the author hies off on. As for me, I agree with the Pulitzer committee. This one's brilliant.

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