James by Percival Everett

If you are a fan of historical fiction, or even if you aren't, you have most likely seen this book talked about in one way or another over the last couple of year. The book has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes and has been reviewed several times for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here.

It is described as "A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.". However this wasn't really a retelling for me because I am Australian and whilst I know the name and the vaguest of details of the Huck Finn story, it isn't as well known to me as it might otherwise have been. 

Here's what I knew about Huckleberry Finn before I read this book. 

• The story was written by Mark Twain
• Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were friends
• Someone builds a raft
• I may have seen cartoon versions of parts of the story as a kid
• The Mississippi played a big part in the story.

And that's about it. So what that really means is that the book had to stand up on it's own merits without relying on the fact that the reader knows so much of the story already. So the question is did it? And the answer is yes, absolutely.

Jim is a slave owned by Miss Watson in a small town near the Mississippi river. He lives with his wife and daughter and is respected by the other slaves. One day he learns that Miss Watson is going to sell him and he decides to run, with the idea that he will find some way to come back and free his family. He hides on an island in the river. The only problem is that there he finds Huck Finn who is also hiding on the island after faking his own death to get away from an abusive father. When you put those two facts together, Jim is in big trouble. Now, due to the timing, he will not only be a runaway slave but he will also be suspected of murder.

Together Jim and Huck travel south along the river, and they come across numerous colourful characters, not least two conmen, Duke and King, who come up with a scheme to sell Jim over and over, as well as a black and white minstrel band where Jim is painted up to look like a white man who is painted up to look like a black man. Regardless of who they meet it is Jim who seems to come out of the situation worse off through accidents, beatings and so much more.

There are times when Jim and Huck are travelling together, and other times when they are separated. I am assuming that if you read the original story we would never see what happens to Jim as we do in these pages. 

Jim, or James as he prefers, is a very smart and educated man, but he knows that there is nothing that will scare a white person as much as an eloquent, educated slave and so, whenever there are white people around, he takes on a persona using poor English and pretending he can't read, let alone write. He finds himself in difficult situations because he tries to help others, often to his own cost. And when others help him, they often pay the cost. 

There is a bit of a twist at the end which I presume is not part of the original story. I guess I will be adding Huckleberry Finn to my Classics Club Spin list to see what Huck got up to when he was off the page.

I love it when a book makes you feel something. It was funny (the way that the slaves put on their language for the white people who expected them to be uneducated and had no idea), it was smart (including guest appearances by famous thinkers like Voltaire and more), it was tragic (oh, Sammy!), it was violent (so many times), it was adventurous (with the river at the heart of the make and break moments in the book) and it was maddening (to think we thought it was okay to treat other people this way).

I do think potentially I would have loved this more if I was more familiar with the original story, but nonetheless this was a really good read! It's interesting to see that Everett has quite a large backlist. I will see if anything else sparks my interest at some point.

This book counts for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here, and counted for two different categories in the Goodreads Challenge (Black Heritage and Tale Spinners).

Rating 4/5