James by Percival Everett is a road trip, a meandering journey of a slave, Jim, as he flees persecution, afraid of being separated from his wife and daughter. As he travels, Jim sees a different world, a world where slaves are not always treated as chattels belonging to white men. A re-telling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, James is Jim’s own story. It is wry, sometimes funny, sometimes violent, sometimes poignant. In 1861, when Jim hears he is about to be sold far away from his family, he runs from the town of Hannibal, Missouri and hides on nearby Jackson Island while he decides what to do next. He doesn’t expect to be found so quickly but found he is, by white teenager Huckleberry Finn who has run away from his violent father. And so, familiar from Twain’s novel, they begin a trip down the dangerous Mississippi River, hoping to find the Free States. They encounter friends, foes, tricksters, drunks, runaway slaves, and slaves who are happy to be enslaved. And then they are told there is a war between the North and the South, a war about the end of slavery.
Everett turns on its head the perception of the slave as uneducated, oppressed, a victim. When together, the slaves speak as their true selves, about emotions, love, politics, the natural world, everything that is life. But when with white people the slaves speak a dialect expected by the massas, speech that demonstrates their lack of education, ignorance, subservience, simple-mindedness. Everything the whites assume and expect. But Jim can read and write, he is well-read. In a fever-dream he is visited by the authors of books he has read; Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke. There are some twists; a slave who is so pale-skinned he can pass unnoticed amongst the white folk; a band of minstrels who don blackface to sing badly-composed slave songs; slaves who will betray a runaway to their white masters.
The winding circular structure to the story mirrors their geographical journey, putting Jim in the path of danger many times. Along the way, Everett examines the nature of morality, the hypocrisy of white masters who beat their slaves in the week and go to church on Sunday, the kindness of some strangers, the hatred of others.
James is a fascinating re-telling of a classic novel, at times uncomfortable, lacerating in its irony and punishment of the white owners. A novel I am glad to have read though I can’t honestly say it was enjoyable.

If you like this, try:-
‘My Name is Yip’ by Paddy Crewe
‘A Thousand Moons’ by Sebastian Barry
‘The Last Runaway’ by Tracy Chevalier

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#BookReview JAMES by Percival Everett https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-82X via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-