A great read. I thought about this book for days after finishing it. Caution: It can be difficult to read due to graphic violence of all sorts. ( )

Set during Jamaica's sugar plantation slave era. It is difficult reading because it is a book filled with terrible things. It's also brilliant.

A good read, language and sexual content a little offensive, but all in all a good read. ( )

The Book of Night Women is a very graphic, visceral novel; violent, with vivid descriptions of rape, murder, whippings in the morning and sex in the dark nights. My delicate Victorian sensibilities were aghast at the blood-soaked birth which opened the book, as Lilith emerged into the world with her mother dead in the process. That inner prude was further shocked by the inability of the book to go more than a page without referencing mens’ ‘cocky’ and womens’ ‘cho-cho.’

I should probably take the opportunity to note that the book is written in a Jamaican patois, which made the reading more of a chore for me. I wasn’t familiar with much of the slang the slaves used, and context wasn’t always enough to clarify. As James portrays them, slaves’ lives seem brutal, crude and short. The use of the dialect definitely heightens the effect.

For me, the combination of explicit violence and roughhewn speech made the book uncomfortable to read, but the main character Lilith made it downright unpleasant. Her vanity and naïveté lead her to feel superior to other slaves; she treats those who would protect her poorly and seems to have no interest in cultivating friendships. She is selfish, whiny and ungrateful to those around her.

All that said, this isn’t a bad novel. It’s well-written, richly-detailed, the plot’s interesting (and intense!) and has a unique cast of characters. But I didn’t like it, didn’t enjoy it, and unless I knew Caribbean slavery to be of particular interest to someone I wouldn’t recommend it. It was just too much for me. ( )

From the back cover:

“Lilith is born into slavery on a sugar plantation in Jamaica near the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they - and she - will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been conspiring to stage a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age they see her as the key to their plans.”

When I started this book, I basically hated it. I hate slave narratives because it is just so wrong that it makes me feel ill and uncomfortable. It’s hard for me to believe that people could do such a thing to other people. Regardless, I persevere because it is important and I should know and anyway, I had to review this book, so I didn’t have much of a choice.

That said, the power of this book seriously grew on me as I went in. I grew to really like Lilith even though she commits the most horrible crimes; you can almost see what drives her to them. I was repelled but fascinated by the plans of the slave revolt and their interactions with each other. I almost always wanted to smack all the white people and I must admit that I was pleased when they got their comeuppance and disappointed that not all of them did. There are some seriously disturbing scenes in this book, so I don’t think it’s appropriate for everyone. It’s not that I can say this was a good book, either, because nothing to do with slavery is good. It is, however, a daring story of the life of one slave woman, the every day struggle just to get by, and ultimately a powerful tribute to impossible love and the depth of human emotion.

http://chikune.com/blog/?p=447 ( )