The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Synposis
Cora is a third-generation slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. One day, a fellow slave, Caeser, approaches her about running away. They do so by using the Underground Railroad, which in this story is quite literal. With a slave catcher on their tail, Cora is forced to flee again and again in her pursuit for freedom.
Review
This book won some awards and was included on several "Best of 2016" lists. The story itself kept me engaged. The author never promised a happy ending for anyone, so I was constantly on my toes, wondering whether the characters would live or die. That being said, I wish a few more characters had somehow miraculously survived, but I guess that would undermine the effect the author was trying to create.
The Underground Railroad being a literal thing was a good premise to start with, though the author never goes into the logistics of it... Like how no one hears a train engine going underground? Or how they could have built a tunnel from Georgia to South Carolina? However, those were only things I thought about afterwards and it didn't really affect the story while I was reading it.
Cora was an interesting character. You don't really feel a deep connection to her, but that's also because she as a character is very closed off, and doesn't really connect well with anyone in the story. But because of that, I felt like the story and the events that took place lost a lot of impact. And it doesn't help that most the secondary characters seem to be there just to be used as a device to show the brutality of the era. You get a little backstory, but you don't feel as much emotional impact at their loss. I would have preferred it in first-person, just to be inside her head a bit more.
Like I said, the plot and characters mostly felt like a means to an end, and that's why I gave it the rating I did. The main purpose of the book was to be a brutal and harsh look into what life was like for slaves, and black people in general, pre-Civil War. You also see the risks many white people took to help slaves escape, and the various degrees of racial prejudices. You can recognize some of the same patterns and prejudices that still crop up even today, 200 years later. For that alone, I think the book is worth reading.
Rating
I give this book 3 stars.
Details
Genre: Historical Fiction, Alternate History
Language: Some language.
Sex: There's sexual assaults and talk of sex and rape, but there is no graphic descriptions of it.
Violence: Lots of violence, and it's graphically described.
Synposis
Cora is a third-generation slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. One day, a fellow slave, Caeser, approaches her about running away. They do so by using the Underground Railroad, which in this story is quite literal. With a slave catcher on their tail, Cora is forced to flee again and again in her pursuit for freedom.
Review
This book won some awards and was included on several "Best of 2016" lists. The story itself kept me engaged. The author never promised a happy ending for anyone, so I was constantly on my toes, wondering whether the characters would live or die. That being said, I wish a few more characters had somehow miraculously survived, but I guess that would undermine the effect the author was trying to create.
The Underground Railroad being a literal thing was a good premise to start with, though the author never goes into the logistics of it... Like how no one hears a train engine going underground? Or how they could have built a tunnel from Georgia to South Carolina? However, those were only things I thought about afterwards and it didn't really affect the story while I was reading it.
Cora was an interesting character. You don't really feel a deep connection to her, but that's also because she as a character is very closed off, and doesn't really connect well with anyone in the story. But because of that, I felt like the story and the events that took place lost a lot of impact. And it doesn't help that most the secondary characters seem to be there just to be used as a device to show the brutality of the era. You get a little backstory, but you don't feel as much emotional impact at their loss. I would have preferred it in first-person, just to be inside her head a bit more.
Like I said, the plot and characters mostly felt like a means to an end, and that's why I gave it the rating I did. The main purpose of the book was to be a brutal and harsh look into what life was like for slaves, and black people in general, pre-Civil War. You also see the risks many white people took to help slaves escape, and the various degrees of racial prejudices. You can recognize some of the same patterns and prejudices that still crop up even today, 200 years later. For that alone, I think the book is worth reading.
Rating
I give this book 3 stars.
Details
Genre: Historical Fiction, Alternate History
Language: Some language.
Sex: There's sexual assaults and talk of sex and rape, but there is no graphic descriptions of it.
Violence: Lots of violence, and it's graphically described.
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