Book of Negroes and Expectations

*I originally wrote this on my writing blog... but it's really themed more around romance and humour. Whereas this site is for the depressing topics. So I transplanted it here. ;-)

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One of the best books I've read on writing fiction is actually a dense and difficult little volume called The Fiction Editor, the Novel and the Novelist by Thomas McCormack. I've read it twice, and will read it again, because his ideas require a certain amount of unpacking; but there are some good ideas that have stuck.

Among other things, he goes into great detail about setting up reader's expectations, and then fulfilling them. In a more sophisticated way than the classic Gun Introduced In Act One example. And I'm thinking about that right now, and about the expectations I have as a reader before I even open the book. Expectations set by the cover art, the reviews on the back, whether the book won awards, what genre it is, whether it's been recommended to me, etc.

If I start reading a book that's won literary praise or awards, that's the bell that sets off my Pavlovian panting for a rich reading experience. The characters can have every sort of horror happen to them, or all die by the end, but I expect (a) strong writing; and (b) to be moved, or have something deep to think about, or for the book to stay with me for awhile, etc.

I'm thinking about all this because I finished The Book of Negroes this week, and experienced a mild letdown. After seeing all the 5 star reviews, and its winning Canada Reads, and after having it recommended to me... I expected to be left with a stronger impression. Like... a heavy meal in my stomach, lots of digesting still to be done.

I suspect Oprah has this kind of sense, because the two Oprah picks I ever read were fantastic: Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible and Mistry's A Fine Balance. I recommend the latter all the time, because I just loved those characters so much, and really really cared about what happened to them.

But Book of Negroes has left me feeling mildly indifferent. The book starts off strong, and it was as page-turning as a thriller. Hill obviously researched the bejeezuz out of this material (the Atlantic slave trade, slavery in Southern Carolina, the lives of free blacks in Nova Scotia, and the colonization of Sierra Leone), and the wealth of detail is what makes the first half of the book so engrossing.

The last half or quarter, however... meh. I was really interested in the lives of freed slaves in Nova Scotia, since I'm Canadian and so is the author. I mean, we all sorta *know* how horrific slavery was in the American south, but I've never studied the early black communities in Canada. And I've never studied the colonization of Sierra Leone, or other Back to Africa movements. But it feels like, by the time he got to these sections, he was exhausted or overcome by the breadth of the novel. The Sierra Leone section is especially rushed.

And through all this rushing from one city to another, one decade of this woman's life to another, I lost touch with her. Not to mention she's--I hate to say it--what in Fantasy circles would be called a Mary Sue. I understand the desire to show a smart, educated black protagonist, suceeding despite her circumstances... but after awhile she became so exceptional, so universally loved, so accomplished, I sort of stopped worrying about her. "Aw whatevah, she'll be fine. But what happened to this woman? Let's follow her instead!" I missed many of the characters who dropped away because the heroine moved on, or the author randomly killed them off.

And when a book is this long (it's not long in terms of pages, but in terms of how much time is covered), I expect a heavy-deep ending to creeeep up on me. If anything, the theme of the book was too obvious to be interesting. The author used one of my fave Bible quotes at the beginning: I hate set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life," and the theme was present throughout. It was about surviving no matter what; about clinging to life even when death is so tempting. But I feel like the message could have been more delicately interwoven through the book; or the idea could have been challenged by other characters; or it could have been an idea the heroine really struggled with. And it's the same with the other themes--about having a recognized identity, and origin. I felt sort of bludgeoned over the head with them.

I've never read Toni Morrisson, but I watched the movie version Oprah made of Beloved, and which people didn't exactly flock to see because it's a long, dark, creepy and difficult story. And even though the book takes place sort of post-slavery--it's about a horrible act committed by a woman to keep her children from being enslaved, and the after effects of that--it left a much deeper impression on me than Book of Negroes. Ah well... maybe it's not fair to compare anyone to Morrisson.

Anyway. Just needed to think this out. ;-)