Book Review: Book of Negroes

So I finished this book, which had been recommended to me by my mother and several friends, the Book of Negroes. While I enjoyed the idea of the book, the book itself disappointed me. I found the plot to be highly unlikely, and the book to be kind of poorly written. I felt like the author's pacing was off, and that he used big words and horrific events to cover it up.

I read the book over the course of about five days, and overall, I found it to be an easy read. As I stated before, the main character's line in the story is highly implausible, an African-born woman who is stolen from her country at the age of 11, sold into slavery, and whose life follows a series of unfortunate and fortunate events. While it's not my opinion that having implausible or unlikely events in a book is erroneous, I do believe the book would have fared better and seemed more believable in the hands of a more capable writer.

The Book of Negroes did, however, interest me in the Canadian "free" colony in Nova Scotia (although I wish the author had spent more time discussing it), and in Canada's (Britain's) role in ending the thievery of native Africans and their subsequent sales into slavery in North America and Western Europe. I intend to visit my library and read some non-fiction works regarding this subject thanks to this book.

Final Star Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. Roots, this is not, but a decent book on an interesting part of the world's history.

Atonement

Has anybody else seen this film? I watched it well over a year ago, and I've been meaning to blog about it, give my thoughts, but to be honest, I was so disturbed by it, it's taken some time to work through how I felt.

First impression - good movie. Great story line. Strong characters. Excellent plot.
Second impression - hard to sleep for about a week afterward.

If you haven't seen it, do look away now. I'm going to post some plot stuff that you may not want to read about.

The story is about a young girl, 11 or 12 maybe, named Briony who tells a lie. The lie snowballs out of her control and a young man is sent to jail, her sister loses her love, and then the young man is shipped off to war. Briony essentially ruins not only her sister's and the young man's life, but also her own because of the guilt that consumes her over however many years she keeps the secret.

I think the hardest part of the whole thing, besides the really harsh, raw edges of the film's story and storytelling is how introspective the film is. Every, single one of us has told a lie or a fib. Maybe not as big of a lie as Briony tells, but a lie nonetheless. It's the whole butterfly causing a tsunami paradigm, and that one cannot possibly predict how a story will affect others.

The whole story is told from the viewpoint of Briony, first as a young girl, then a young woman, and finally an old lady. The depth of the movie comes not from the other characters themselves, because they are really quite static and perfect in a lot of ways, but from the way reality twists and fades into myth in Briony's mind and therefore her story. For example, the male lead, Robbie, played by James McAvoy, is too perfect. He is what Briony has made him in her mind through regret. Despite the ubiquitous and rather shocking use of the C-word (which, if I remember correctly, made me drop a stitch on some rather finicky lace), and a very vigorous trist between him and the female lead, Cecilia, played by Keira Knightley, he does nothing wrong. He is a saint.

(As an aside, when I Googled the correct spelling of Keira Knightley's name, there were some rather disturbing photoshops. Since when does she have boobs?)

Cecilia is less of a saint, but still perfect nonetheless. Stoical and strong, she's portrayed in the film as very little girl would view an older sister, I imagine. I wouldn't know for sure, of course, seeing as I am an older sister to a younger brother.

The movie didn't fall short for me, although I would be hesitant to watch it again, simply for the disturbing factor. The acting was top notch, with the main focal points being young Briony, played by Saoirse Ronan (who was brilliant, by the way), and James McAvoy's character, Robbie. Knightley...I'm not her biggest fan, but she brought a lot to the character.

So, overall, four-and-a-half stars, with half a star docked for disrupting my sleep.

Reading

I was recently saying to my husband, Robbie, that I should have been a book critic. Reading is my favourite past time (even more than knitting), and I do a lot of it. If I have a lazy Saturday, I can easily finish a book in a day. Over the weekend, I read a novel and a collection of short stories. I've always enjoyed being whisked away into a new world or environment and getting caught up with the stories, the characters and the culture of the book. A great example would be Shogun, which I read several months ago. I absolutely loved how the author brought pre-Western Japan to life. I found the book hard to get into at first, but after they finished boiling people (totally gross), I got it. It clicked. I really enjoyed it and felt like I'd walked away with new information to cram into my head and blurt out at social events.

I tend to rotate my favourite books, all of which are pretty heavy reading and all of which are part of a series, and stick "fluffy" or new books in between them. The faves list is ever-expanding, although rarely do I drop a book off the list. The current list includes:

Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the full series)
Earth Children (Clan of the Cave Bear, Valley of Horses, Mammoth Hunters, Plains of Passage, Shelters of Stone)
His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Lord of the Rings
and The Harry Potter Series.

Thanks to my dear husband, who is continually buying me books (yay!), I can add another series to that list. Robbie got me The Southern Vampire Mysteries for my birthday. I read seven of them in ten days, and started and finished the eighth on Sunday. They are fluffy. They are funny. There is sex. This is my kind of book.

I much prefer the books to True Blood, which is based on the books. When I say based, I mean loosely based. The first season of True Blood followed the plot of the first book pretty closely, but the second one was *way* not on target. I like that the main character, Sookie Stackhouse, is vain and knows that she's hawt and likes to sunbathe. I like the strange Louisiana colloquialisms that get thrown in (knee-deep in alligators). I LOVE the vampires because, unlike the Twilight series, these are creatures of the night who are blood thirsty, money hungry, love sex, use, abuse, and are generally terrifying. Sookie is a strong female character, unlike Meyer's main character who does nothing but trip over her feet, be depressing and follow her man like a hungry puppy.

Sookie kicks ass and takes names. I like that in my heroines.

So. Check it out, folks. Southern Vampire Mysteries, starting with book one, Dead Until Dark. I'm putting this sucker on my faves list.