James

I loved the voice of James. I loved going on the journey with him and seeing his own evolution and change. I loved everything about this book. It was smart, heartrending, a little metaphysical, funny in a cold, horrifying way.

This is an extraordinary book by a wonderful writer. I have been a big fan of Percival Everett ever since I read Erasure, over 20 years ago. As a writer, he is engaged at every level, experimental, bold, witty, funny, intellectually and politically committed. James is a celebration of and a profound literary encounter with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Everett retells the story from the point of view of "Jim" the runaway slave. But this is much more than a re-telling; it is both an interpretation of Twain’s story and a subversive transformation of its meanings.… show more.

If you've read Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you'll remember that of all the relationships Huck has -- with his violent father, the wretched con men who hijack his and Jim's escape, and the malignant fantasist and bully Tom Sawyer -- only the one with Jim is rooted in care, as fragile and compromised as it. Percival Everett re-enters the world of Twain's hallmark novel and tells the story from the perspective of Jim, the runaway slave who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi on an improvised raft. Both are escaping circumstances Everett carefully describes, setting up for a… show more.

I've been a long time fan of Percival Everett's writing. This one did not disappoint.

A wonderful voice and clever twist in the tail!

Incredibly plot, brilliant concepts, wonderfully imaginative

Everett is a master wordsmith, taking us into James' double-life. The best fiction I read all year.

The narrative voice is so strong, so certain of itself even when it is uncertain of the course to be taken. I felt I was inside James's head, making real-time decisions as he did.

It is a wonderful thing to read the experience of the marginalized without being made to feel constantly and blamefully Other. Everett doesn't pull punches, but he doesn't exclude any readers from the amazing journey he creates.

Percival Everett introduces us to Mark Twain's character, the slave Jim, in a new and revolutionary way. I believe James is the book that Mark Twain might have written if he had been born a century and a half later. James is engaging and entertaining but more, it will cause you to think in new ways.