James

 

James by Percival Everett

Fiction

2024

Finished on January 28, 2025

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and ferociously funny—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

I can't remember if I have read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or for that matter, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) or if the story is familiar from seeing illustrations and reading snippets about the book over the years. There are certainly several film versions, but none that I recognize that spark a memory of having seen them. My book group voted to read James, and I was eager to get a copy since I've heard nothing but rave reviews about Percival Everett's award-winning novel. I enjoyed the story, which is very readable and moves quickly, but it fell short of my expectations, perhaps due to the hype since its publication. Everett's powerful re-telling of Mark Twain's classic is impressive and enlightening, particularly that of Jim's "slave talk" which is used in the presence of white people. Jim gives language lessons in order for others to live safely in a racist world.

“But what are you going to say when she asks you about it?” I asked.

Lizzie cleared her throat. “Miss Watson, dat some cone-bread lak I neva before et.”

“Try ‘dat be,’” I said. “That would be the correct incorrect grammar.”

and

“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. Perhaps I should say ‘when they don’t feel superior.’”

I'm looking forward to the book discussion, curious to hear if others feel more enthusiastic about the novel than I.