The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Stacey gave me this one Christmas or birthday; It was an NPR recommendation. It is one of those books that sit on the To Be Read shelf, looking somewhat appealing, but always overshadowed by a flashier title next to it.

But I made a decision to attack those piles of attractive-but-somehow-second-choice books on my shelf, and this was the second one from that list (The Time Traveler being the first).

It’s a very good book, if a book about the institution of slavery can be said to be “good”. It delves into the lesser known quirks of the time, such as free blacks living amongst slaves, and, in fact, owning slaves. If a paper is all that stands between a black man and slavery, what happens when the paper is eaten?

As interesting (and unsettling) as the topic was, the real shining point was the storytelling technique. There was a smooth jumping back and forth in time, often pausing in the middle of a paragraph in the “present” and telling the full fate of a character in a sentence or two. It reminded me of “Run, Lola, Run”, when we would often see a series of snapshots showing the fate of someone Lola bumped into.

The characters are complex and nuanced, and there are a lot of them, all deftly painted.

It’s not my typical sort of book, but I’m glad I read it, possibly because of that.