Drapetomania: Or, The Narrative of Cyrus Tyler & Abednego Tyler, lovers by John R. Gordon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
4.9 Stars
Why not 5 stars? See the last paragraph.
This was without a doubt one of the most emotional and moving books I have read in a long, long time. John Gordon’s writing is stunningly beautiful, intimate, and powerful. The story is dramatic, sensitive, almost unbearably cold in its realistic descriptions of human misery, and yet it is also uplifting and hopeful.
If you can get past the first few pages and prepare yourself emotionally for what’s to come in the next 500, you will be rewarded with writing that is, quite simply, superb. Whether it’s a description of abject poverty, hunger, and inequality among men; or the magnificent colors and obstacles in nature; or the feelings of pain a person probably experiences at the doorstep of death either through freezing, hunger, overwork, or inflicted pain; or even the intimate love between Cyrus and Abednego, you will feel like you are there, having those experiences.
The author’s descriptions of cruelty, terror, and inhumanity inflicted upon slaves by their owners and overseers are excruciating to read. I can’t imagine putting those words on paper because I would feel like I was personally committing those crimes, and twice, when I could tell what was going to happen in the upcoming scene, I had to jump to the next paragraph. It was just too much for me.
Yet I couldn’t put this book down. The pace of the story is very fast, and close calls kept my heart thumping. Gordon is a master wordsmith. At times a single paragraph takes up a full page but it’s never daunting. Gordon uses erudite, seldom-used words such as architraves, chiaroscuro, chthonic, coffle, despoliation, desuetude, encomium, gnomon, incarnadine, manumission, ormolu, scotopic, and susurrus, which when juxtaposed against the basics of survival add to the beauty and drama occurring on the page.
This is one hell of a story, and I loved it! Here’s my single complaint. The book could have used another proofread before it was published. I found a few mistakes such as a zero used for an oh letter in one place; at least one instance of run-in words; and too many uses of further and brake when the words farther and break, respectively, were meant. Words are currently styled for a British audience (amidst, amongst, afterwards, backwards, cauterised, crystalised, southwards, towards), whereas American readers are more accustomed to amid, among, afterward, backward, cauterized, crystalized, southward, toward, and the like. But my pet peeve was the constant, unnecessary hyphenation of adverbial phrases (brightly-lit, gaily-painted), which after a while became like a bad tic in writing. If the book had gone through another proofread to catch some of those errors, I would have given it 5 stars. I’m a picky reader, but still, this book is a smashing success!
View all my reviews