The Known World | Edward P. Jones

The Known World | Edward P. Jones | Not just about color, but more about wealth.

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The Known World

	The Known World Edward P. Jones Amistad, 2003 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 296 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Stellar.

Gritty, insightful account of former slaves owning slaves in antebellum Virginia. Breathtaking prose and deeply moving character development. Hands down the most compelling book I've read in the past several years.

Not just about color, but more about wealth.

The Know World is a book I enjoyed. I felt pulled into a world I knew nothing about, as if in a dream walking bare foot down a dirt road. Hearing galloping horses and running to hide in the adjacent fields, fearing of who the riders could be.
As a divorce mother with shared visitation of my children, knowing the pain Henry Townsend's mother must have felt when she and her husband both now freed slaves having to leave their young son after every visit because he was still a slave.
Henry Townsend main character a freed slave and then becomes a slave owner.
I found myself hating Caldonia's mother after Henry's passing because of her believe that Henry's slaves where Caledonia legacy.
How proud I felt of Sheriff John Skiffington and his wife Winifred when they were given a young slave girl, and took her in as part of their family.
Edward P. Jones's novel tells a story of slavery not of blacks and whites but human being; the color wasn't the only issues; it was more about who had money to be free and also who had the wealth to keep slaves.
This is a book I will read again and again, it was worth my time. But be prepared to be pulled into world where having slaves was a right of passage.

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An interesting and fresh take on the genre with fantastic writing to boot (4.5 stars)

The Known World is a complex morality piece set in the Antebellum South in and around the mid 19th century. The story takes place in Manchester county, Virginia and primarily focuses on the slaves and slave owners lives all centered around the death of a prominent slave owner who is himself an African American.

The writing is rich and the content is heavy. As a reader you become immersed in the various points of view that shift through multiple characters and time periods. Jones is exceptional at making the feelings and atmosphere ooze of the page and his characters are complex yet realistic.

My favorite aspect of the novel is the complexity involved from a moral standpoint. You have black slave owners to white abolitionists whose welfare is dependent on slavery. Jones doesn't take the easy way out and there are no easy answers. Characters behave admirably in some situations abhorrently in others but always with purpose.

This novel is not an easy read and I wouldn't recommend it for light readers. After the first 30 pages, I had to start over, literally writing down notes about characters and lineage because it became too much to remember every time I put the book down.

Bottom Line: This book won the Pulitzer a few years back and it is a must read for people interested in the subject and historical fiction.

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A Unique Look

This novel is an excellent work of fiction that focuses on a little known fact of slavery. Its focus is on the greed and lack of integrity that were involved with the "peculiar institution" rather than the horrible actions it facilitated. This read very mcuh like Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, an intricately-woven story that follows a family's downfall in a fictional city (in the case of World, it's Manchester County). There are elements of magical realism and a great depth of emotion in the characters, and the theme of decrepancy and rot in antebellum slavery is well explored. Delivered with masterful understatement, this book will stick for quite some time.

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A decent read....

I read or rather listened to the unabridged audio version of this book. I have read through the reviews and saw where people were having a difficult to impossible time keeping up with the characters because there were so many and he did so much jumping back and forth in time. I can see where this could happen had I read the printed book rather than listening to the audio. Kevin R. Free is an excellent narrator and I think this is a large part of why I didn't get confused or lost with the amount of characters. I strongly urge readers to enjoy the audio version of this book because of the many characters and subplots. When the voices of the characters are being performed for you via a live narrator then it is easier to hold the story together in your mind.

Overall, for a debut novel, this wasn't that bad. Like I said it was decent and it does give food for thought.

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