The compelling nature
of the story, and the brilliant writing keep the reader engrossed. “James” is
an important, clever and fascinating book. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer,
courtesy of The Witness)
James has to hide his ability to read and write as well, but the reader learns how the narrator acquired these skills, and Everett makes it all completely believable
Percival Everett is an African American academic and
acclaimed novelist – his 2021 novel, The
Trees, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And in James he has produced an astonishing and brilliant book which
deserves any and all the prizes that may come its way.
The eponymous central character is the runaway slave Jim from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and here that novel from the 1880s is retold from his viewpoint.
Retelling of stories from the literary canon has become a
popular activity over the last few years, with very mixed results, but this is
a definite success. Huckleberry Finn,
hailed in its day as the great American novel is inevitably now seen as
problematic, mainly because of its use of racist language and some of the
attitudes prevailing at the time, but in his author’s note at the end of James, Everett gives a warm nod to
Twain’s humour and humanity.
Language is a central issue in the book. Twain’s novel was a pioneer in using dialect in speech, and Everett turns that on its head. Writing in the first person, James uses correct and quite formal English to record his adventures, but when he speaks to any white person, though not to other slaves, he uses what can be called “slave dialect”.
There is a scene early in the novel where James is instructing his daughter and other children in how and why to speak to whites in this way. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” I said. “The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us.” It is a very telling scene, and reverberates throughout the book. James has to hide his ability to read and write as well, but the reader learns how the narrator acquired these skills, and Everett makes it all completely believable
And then James hears that he is to be sold, so he goes on the run, hoping eventually to raise enough money to buy his wife and child and move to the North, where they could all be free. And, of course, he is joined on the run by Huck, who has faked his own death in an attempt to escape his abusive and drunken father. But inevitably this means that James will be suspected of having killed Huck, which throws his plans into disarray. Everett draws the relationship between the two with great subtlety – Huck an almost feral child but with the advantage of his white skin, and James an intelligent and compassionate man but still a slave.
Some of the adventures the two have as they attempt to escape down the Mississippi are the same as in Huckleberry Finn, but at the times when they are separated, we are treated to what is happening to James alone. Some of the events are savagely funny – Everett is often a very humorous writer. And the story rollicks along.
As with The Trees, James gets darker as it progresses, the narrator’s anger at his enslaved position becoming stronger, and ultimately more violent. The horror of slavery moves front and centre of the story, rather than the adventuring of the escape and the often farcical situations James and Huck find themselves in. But the compelling nature of the story, and the brilliant writing keep the reader engrossed. James is an important, clever and fascinating book. - Margaret von Klemperer
Percival Everett’s book James
is published by Mantle Books: ISBN-13: 978-1035031245
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