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The Known Worldby Edward P. Jones |
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One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, The Known World is a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones.
The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.
From Amazon.com Review:
Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War began, Edward P. Jones's debut novel, The Known World, is a masterpiece of overlapping plot lines, time shifts, and heartbreaking details of life under slavery. Caldonia Townsend is an educated black slaveowner, the widow of a well-loved young farmer named Henry, whose parents had bought their own freedom, and then freed their son, only to watch him buy himself a slave as soon as he had saved enough money. Although a fair and gentle master by the standards of the day, Henry Townsend had learned from former master about the proper distance to keep from one's property. After his death, his slaves wonder if Caldonia will free them. When she fails to do so, but instead breaches the code that keeps them separate from her, a little piece of Manchester County begins to unravel. Impossible to rush through, The Known World is a complex, beautifully written novel with a large cast of characters, rewarding the patient reader with unexpected connections, some reaching into the present day. --Regina Marler
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Let this book remain unknown to you, unless the subject fascinates you -  |
The Known World Review |
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CONFESSION: It's hard to get me interested in historical fiction. I prefer with nonfiction or scifi. I only read this book because I had nothing else to read at the time. On the other hand, that made me a captive audience. I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get into it.
PROS: - The concept (a black owning slaves) is interesting. - The dialogue feels real - The chapter titles gives you an idea where the story might go - A list the dozen characters, a glossary of sorts, is in the back of the paperback. CONS: - Way too many characters. I had to refer to their character summary often to help me along. It's too confusing unless you're really into it and paying 100% attention. - Because of the myriad of characters, I didn't become attached to any. - I would have liked so more direct, overt dialogue about the moral dilemmas. CONCLUSION: If you love historical fiction, especially about slavery, then this is your perfect book. I know it's a no-no to be lukewarm about books that we're supposed to like (e.g, Shakespeare or Pulitzer Prize Winners), but I wouldn't recommend this book unless you love the subject matter. |
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Dull -  |
The Known World Review |
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Edward P. Jones wrote a terrific book of short stories in 1991, Lost In The City, that was justifiably critically praised, for nine of its fourteen tales are great, but it was forgotten until his 2003 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning novel, The Known World, came out. Then his publisher, Amistad Press, rushed to reprint the earlier work, to cash in on the publicity, after years of pulping old copies. It is ironic, because in this edition of the novel, the best writing in the whole book comes from an epilogue that reprints perhaps the best of those tales, The Girl Who Raised Pigeons, and it stands in sharp contrast to the jumbled, muddied work that is the bulk of Jones' novel. Even its very title is muddied, as it primarily refers to the extant world of bondage it portrays, and a host of lesser oblique meanings- such as its primary setting.
That said, the book is not really a bad work of fiction, on the level of a T.C. Boyle, Joyce Carol Oates, or, Heaven forfend!, Dave Eggers or David Foster Wallace, merely an overrated and mediocre one. On a 1-100 scale I'd say it's a solid 70 or so, but clearly Jones' is at his artistic height in his excellent short stories, where his poetic lines do not smear over into drab run-on sentences that can mix up tenses and lose the narrative push. Unfortunately, this book's critical and popular success probably means Jones will kowtow and start publishing novels exclusively because, as the self-fulfilling prophecy goes, `short stories do not sell', nor do they get optioned into films. This would be a shame, literarily speaking, because Jones' tendency to overdescribe and toss so much at a reader so quickly works well in short bursts, especially in the spatial limitations of his short stories, for they lend a richness and heft to those works that the `airy' and banal short stories of most current fictionists lack, besides also lacking narrative and any real characterization skills. But, in the novel, this tendency lets Jones linger far too long on minutia that never serves a later purpose in the book. Characters and things and incidents are detailed, then dropped totally. And they do not serve even a purpose of clarifying a later action nor the character they involve. Far too much of this 388 page novel is devoted to the repeated going back to the death of one of its main characters, the black, thirty-one year old Henry Townsend, who owns fifty acres of land and thirty plus slaves. This is, in itself, not bad, were each return to the era that the event occurs somehow skewed or heightened by a different perspective. Instead, we just lazily troll through the dying, death, funeral, and aftermath, even as the narrative bounces around through the decades of the 19th Century. It's not that, as many readers have complained, the tale is difficult to follow, as it is simply dull....Similarly, a muddled story is not necessarily a complex one. Finnegans Wake proved that, and this book does too, although it is far superior to Joyce's syphilitic rant. Yet, it is also a story with no emotional center. Its anomic structure and haphazard characterization result in the reader not wanting to ever go back and reread a passage to get some import they may have missed, or are fuzzy on. And unlike its review in the New York Times, this book is not epic in the least, unless that term now means `padded'. Traditionally, the word implies a grand scale, and this book is the very antithesis of that notion. It is personal in the extreme. It just doesn't make up its mind about which person nor thing it is really about, and thus there is no payoff for the reader, just several hours lost in an intriguing premise that never fulfills itself. That the book won so many awards is doubtlessly due to its subject matter, not its text. This is the new standard in literature, though, and we all suffer for it. At least Jones' Known World is dead. This one, I fear, has a ways to go before the grave. |
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Gorgeous -  |
The Known World Review |
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"The Known World" is one of the most beautifully written novels I've read. I savored it as as I do Nabokov or Garcia Marquez. If you appreciate a flawlessly structured narrative written with sublime economy of words; if you delight in reading a good story with deep philosophical undercurrents; if you live in pursuit of fine literature--- well, then, read this book. By the way, saying: "this book is too difficult for me to get into," isn't *exactly* levelling criticism at the book. |
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Riveting! You'll never forget it. - |
The Known World Review |
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Edward P. Jones's "The Known World": A Study Guide from Gale's "Novels for Students" (Volume 26, Chapter 4) |
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Gripping - |
The Known World Review |
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What an awesome story. It is not a simple linear story rather rich in detail and circuitous. The time jumps around quite a bit and so do the many stories within the story.I was hooked from the beginning. Fascinating read. I read his on vacation but it is a deep and entertaining read. I think it would also be a great piece to read for a high school o college history class. |
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