The Printed Page

Welcome to By the Chapter. This week’s featured book is The Known World by Edward P. Jones. Sharing hosting duties with me this week is Judy from Intergalatic Bookworm. Elizabeth from As usual, I need more bookshelves joined us Monday.

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If you’re not familiar with this award winning book here’s a little background:

Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, through the surprising twists and unforeseen turns of life in antebellum Virginia, becomes proprietor of his own plantation — as well as his own slaves. Following his untimely death, Henry’s widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and their carefully-maintained plantation starts to come undone: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love and loyalty under the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the Townsend household, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave “speculators” sell free black people into slavery, slaves and their masters chafe at the social confines of their relationships, and rumors of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years.

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The subject matter of this book is what initially caught my attention. When I think about the American civil war and slave owners I think ‘white’. It never dawned on me that blacks owned blacks. It wasn’t in any of my US history lessons and I don’t believe I’d ever heard mention of this owner/slave relationship before picking up The Known World. After browsing the Internet in hopes of finding more on this subject I came across very little information. It appears that much wasn’t documented in historical records regarding black slave owners. I did find this article by Robert M. Grooms written in 1997. Wikipedia also lists a reference to this topic in the Slavery in the United States section.

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This book was as much of a struggle to read as I thought it might be on Monday when I posted my first thoughts. I didn’t finish but gave it a good try. I read halfway and finally put it down. This is an award winning book so I kept thinking (hoping) it would get better. I really feel it was a missed opportunity by the author. Take a little known civil war era fact – black slave owners – and write a wonderfully insightful fiction novel. Unfortunately that’s not what The Known World is. Instead it’s a jumbled mess. It’s full of starts and stops, detours that lead no where. You’re reading along and suddenly what reads like a misplaced paragraph crops up in the middle of story line. Sentences appearing wholly unrelated to time and place. Then once again you’re back to where you were wondering what just happened. At first I didn’t give it much thought thinking I needed to adjust the writing style. But as it continued I realized this was going to be the story style. It’s very confusing and breaks whatever momentum the story has going.

This is one book I won’t be recommending.

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If you’ve read, or are currently reading, The Known World please share your thoughts with us.

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This week’s reading scheduling:
Monday: The Printed Page/Elizabeth from As usual, I need more bookshelves
Wednesday: Judy from Intergalatic Bookworm
Friday: The Printed Page/Judy from Intergalatic Bookworm

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