Thoughts of Twain’s Jim revealed
Percival Everett has penned more than 30 novels with resonant, sometimes playful titles, such as “The Trees,” a Booker Prize contender, or “Dr. No.” Oscar winner “American Fiction” is based on his 2001 satire “Erasure.”
His latest, “James,” also playful and resonant, is a rewrite of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Today, the novel’s use of racially charged language rattles us. One epithet appears more than 200 times in the unsanitized text.
Among other offenses are its derogatory depictions of the enslaved Jim, who is rendered illiterate and mostly unintelligible in colloquial speech. Where others might see an exercise in humiliation and vexation, Everett, who is Black, sees an opportunity for reeducation and redress. In his rewrite of “Finn,” Everett grants us immediate access to that familiar time and place, right before the Civil War, when it was terrifying to be a Black person in Missouri, racially offensive language and all.
But there are twists to this new, century-old tale, in which Huck’s story is mostly secondary. Our sole protagonist Jim — or James, as he will name himself — harbors a dangerous secret for a slave at that time. “I am” he confesses, “a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.” He also knows how to wield his excellent grasp of language to his benefit, using a “slave filter” — a kind of code switching — when it serves him.
A fast-paced plot reveals the high stakes. Jim’s path to freedom for himself and his family is riddled with tricksters, hideous danger, an unbelievable revelation and some tragicomedy.
Ultimately, in Everett’s
“James,” we discover a man whose smarts and agency upend the unimaginable indignities of a racist past to help him secure freedom. Ironically, humor and magnanimity, especially toward Huck, also pulse throughout. And, not so ironically, so does Jim’s anger.
Everett has drawn on what he knows best here — that freedom can be won, one word at a time. Add levity and serious intent, and you have a novel that’s a class act. — Angela Ajayi, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Chris Bohjalian has a type. His recent thrillers
are about glamorous, imperiled women who may not be trustworthy but whose senses of humor makes us like them anyway.
The author of “The Flight Attendant” and “The Lioness” is true to type with “The Princess of Las Vegas,” who has an adventure that is as dangerous and improbable as those experienced by the heroines of his previous books. She’s Crissy Dowling, who exploits her resemblance to Diana Spencer in a Vegas cabaret act where she sings British pop songs, tells stories about royals and avoids mentioning the fact that Diana is, um, dead.
Quite a few unlikely
By Chris Bohjalian; Doubleday, 400 pages, $29.
things happen. Crissy’s sister Betsy is almost an exact double who suddenly moves to Sin City with her unscrupulous lover. The mob wants to swallow Crissy’s low-rent casino. Betsy has a recently adopted daughter who may not be what she seems. And Crissy’s former lovers include a senator who’s in a tight reelection race.
Bohjalian roots the improbabilities in something real: the dynamic between two siblings who always have been rivals and who have found it easier to ignore each other than to improve their relationship after the death of their mother.
Like her foremothers in “Flight Attendant” and “Lioness,” Crissy makes frequent disastrous decisions that exasperate us but, unlike those two, we’re not entirely sure if we’re supposed to identify with Crissy. As Crissy’s behavior becomes increasingly peculiar, Bohjalian dangles the possibility that Betsy is the character who deserves our sympathies.
Bohjalian keeps us guessing until the end, by which point we’re not sure if anyone will find much luck in the heart of this desert.