Huckleberry Finn is a the classic funny-but-serious tale of a boy who runs away with Jim, a slave trying to escape to freedom. Now Percival Everett has rewritten the original nineteenth-century novel, changing the original point of view of Huck Finn, Twain’s hero, to that of Jim, the slave who runs away with him. As a professor of literature, I would love to teach these two novels together!
James is a bold and courageous tour de force that turns history on its head. Everett’s novel succeeds beautifully in pulling us into its world through great characters and sharp humor in the telling. The lover of language in me is thrilled to see how masterfully Everett handles Jim’s “code-switching,” using stereotypical language both to make his point and to make us laugh along with Jim. I think it’s fair to say that no one but Percival Everett could have written this book, and it was an easy pick for me as my Favorite of 2024.
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
James by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new…
I’m a sucker for a good mystery or police procedural, and in fact I always have one by my bedside, along with a memoir and non-fiction.Stella Sands published six true-life crime thrillers before turning to a fictional who-done-it with an unusual investigator, and the result is wonderfully original. Her heroine is neither a detective by profession nor a police officer; she’s a college student who’s preternaturally gifted in linguistics, especially drawn to forensic linguistics, the use of language as evidence in criminal cases. Maggie, our heroine, is rough-and-ready, with tattoos, beer, cigarettes and motorcycle, yet a genius at finding clues to mysteries that are not apparent to anyone else. I will bet that there’s been no female detective quite like Maggie in the realm of mysteries.
Since humor and romance are features of fiction I find appealing, this novel had me at Maggie’s high-level banter with a police detective who partners with her to solve a kidnapping. Wordhunter is a delight to read, though not high on plausibility. But then no novel is perfect (except for Jane Austen’s oeuvre, and possibly Percy Everett’s James).
An utterly original and compulsively readable detective story about a woman who uses her uncanny ability to analyze words and speech patterns to help solve crimes.
Tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess, Maggie Moore is a surprising genius when it comes to words, a savant able to solve any linguistic puzzle. The top student in her forensic linguistics class, she’s tapped by local police to use her skills to decipher harrowing notes left by a stalker-turned-rapist—and succeeds brilliantly.
But when the daughter of a local mayor is abducted, Maggie isn’t sure…
Emily Van Dyne deeply loves the great poet Sylvia Plath. Many do, but the author of this new perspective on Sylvia Plath’s life, death and body of work has done the intricate research that few have done so well. She digs deeply into the complex ways Plath’s life impinged on her work, including how personal writing and poetic legacy were manipulated by her husband, also a famous poet, after she took her own life and those of her small children.
Van Dyne doesn’t claim to know that Plath was a victim of intimate partner violence, but rather provides us with the evidence that makes her believe so. We can judge for ourselves, though not conclusively.
I like the authenticity of this book, told in the first person, as the author entwines the poet’s life, Plath’s journals and letters, and the author’s experience of the violence she has experienced in her own life
Sylvia Plath is an object of enduring cultural fascination-the troubled patron saint of confessional poetry, a writer whose genius is buried under the weight of her status as the quintessential literary sad girl. Emily Van Duyne-a superfan and scholar-radically reimagines the last years of Plath's life, confronts her suicide and the construction of her legacy. Drawing from decades of study on Plath and her husband, Ted Hughes, the chief architect of Plath's mythology; the life and tragic suicide of Assia Wevill, Hughes's mistress; newly available archival materials; and a deep understanding of intimate partner violence, Van Duyne seeks to undo…
This is not your usual memoir – much less a typical love story. Loveland is about the unfolding of unmet expectations, of shattered childhood dreams, of tenderness found unexpectedly; it is the uncovering of different layers of one’ s self, relationship after relationship. The rationale for understanding the engineering of love, in its infinite nuances, comes through the framework of literature. Books shape our perceptions: their characters set parameters, their stories create paradigms, and we live by them forever. If you’ re interested in a different vision of happily-ever-after, this is the book for you.
