I thought the setup for this story was promising: a young slave with a keen eye, a gentleman scientist who sees the potential in him, some kind of steampunky stuff (that I'm slightly embarrassing to like, but hey) and an Arctic exploration. With all of these elements you'd usually expect a bad historical novel, but this was shortlisted for the Man Booker, so I figured there must be exciting language and interesting subversions of plot and character.

There were not.

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Washington Black is a young slave boy working as a field hand on a Barbadian sugar plantation. His owner dies and is succeeded by a brutal relative. After being implicated in a terrifying incident, Washington is whisked away by the master's brother Titch, a scientific man who wants to utilise his precocious drawing skills.

Pursued by a bounty hunter, Wash and Titch head to the Arctic where Titch is reunited with his father. There he leaves Wash to make his own way in the world, eventually travelling down to Canada and some semblance of safety, but without ever feeling entirely secure, and haunted by his past.

This is a stirring and epic novel with a vast range of locations that Edugyan takes her hero through in his quest to reconcile his past. It captures the early stirrings of the Enlightenment and the emancipation movement, as well as the popularisation of natural science as a pursuit for gentlefolk, events of lasting significance which Edugyan manages to position Wash on the periphery of.

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Lo and behold, a Man Booker nominee that doesn't rely on an original structure, but rather on a great combination of strong storytelling, beautifully rendered prose, and a central character that a reader can really care for and about. This book actually really reminds me of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, except it doesn't go off the rails at the end. But I saw parallels with the young male narrator at the center of the story dealing with tremendous loss and leaning on relative strangers combined with outstanding writing at the sentence/paragraph level. The plot is similarly free flowing and vaguely unbelievable, but I think Edugyan actually does a better job shutting down my inner critic by making a protagonist so sympathetic and interesting that I focused more on the micro aspects of his relationships and angst and less on the fact that he managed to go to the Artic, Amsterdam, London, Nova Scotia, and Morroco despite the fact that he was an escaped slave.

Some readers won't like the ending. It's not neatly tied up with a bow, but I feel like it makes it more truthful at its core, more human. The book focuses on issues of identity, and how many of us actually truly understand all of our underlying motivations and exactly why we do things? I read somewhere that it is very common for people to take actions instinctively and then try to justify them intellectually after the fact. I believe it. How often do others' actions seem inexplicable to us? Washington Black explores these aspects of human nature and so much more. It's a deeper book than it appears on the surface, but written in a super accessible way (that could be read more superficially and still enjoyed). It would make for a great book club book.

So far, of the seven longlisted Man Booker nominees I've read this year, this one is my favorite. ( )

There may be more brutal, unfeeling masters than Erasmus Wilde, owner of Faith sugar plantation in Barbados in 1830, but it’s hard to imagine. For instance, when a slave commits suicide, an overseer decapitates his corpse. Why? The slaves believe that once they die, they’ll be reunited with their people in Africa. So Wilde tells them that headless corpses wander for eternity; beware, there’s no escape. If you kill yourself, you’re a thief, stealing his property.

Such crushing logic, which warps every conceivable interaction, cows nearly all the slaves into hopeless submission; most do all they can to remain inconspicuous. Consequently, when Wilde’s brother Christopher comes to stay, eleven-year-old George Washington Black (known as Wash) is terrified to discover that he’s been chosen the newcomer’s manservant.

To his amazement, however, Christopher — who insists on being called Titch — is cut from a very different cloth, as Wash quickly learns whenever he must go to the big house and wait table. Titch has no interest in slavery, except to abolish it, and Faith’s chief attractions for him are the flora and fauna and a steep hill from which he hopes to launch a balloon for exploration.

But a suspicious death forces the two to flee — and from that moment, Wash begins to imagine the life he could never have dreamed of. Whether he gets it or not, and how he reinvents himself in the process, makes as compelling a novel as you will find. Washington Black will captivate you and make you think.

Edugyan examines, from the inside, what it means to be a slave, to have no will of your own save what little is granted, and which may be taken away at any time. That sounds obvious, but I assure you, in its moment-to-moment portrayal here, that simply stated condition has deep, insidious effects that wrap around the characters like the roots of an evil, destructive plant.

Titch may dislike slavery, yet Wash wonders what, exactly, he means to his new boss. Is Wash a real person or merely the perfect size and shape ballast for the balloon? Is his a young mind Titch respects, or does the scientist teach him what he needs to become a better assistant? As with all the characters, and I do mean all, the author depicts this pair in their fullness, so that you know their internal struggles. Even Erasmus Wilde, a truly despicable man, has his angles and quirks; no cardboard villain, he. In that way, he receives his due, even as the perpetrator of great evil.

To write a good novel about a victim is harder than it looks. (Writing any good novel is harder than it looks, but that’s another story.) Self-pity would undermine the narrative and warp the reader’s connection to Wash, while earnestness, the flip side of that coin, would demean this tale. Not here. Wash hates his enemies with a razor fierceness, no righteousness, bravado, or breast-beating allowed, just earned hostility. Whatever self-pity creeps in momentarily overtakes him in a different context — love, which is only natural and quite real. Everyone in love acts entitled once in a while.

Also important, Wash never stops striving and loving, no matter what blows he takes. Suffering by itself holds only a tenuous connection for readers; but caring for someone else despite suffering always wins. If Wash becomes remarkably adept at certain pursuits, perhaps stretching credulity, his path remains difficult, often perilous, his adventures allowing for (if not demanding) a character somewhat larger than life.

Throughout, he’s a spectacular observer, the prose being another pleasure of the book. Sometimes, in the early going when Wash is still a young boy, the voice slips — the narrative makes observations seemingly too knowledgeable for a lad, even one looking back from later years. But that’s a minor blemish on a superb novel. ( )

Wow what a story! I loved almost every bit of this book. Every day I was haunted by this story and couldn't wait to get home from work to pick it up and start reading again. I'm not sure if I've ever talked so much about a story to others before. I highly recommend! The writing is amazing, so fluid and descriptive that you get lost in it. Even though this book didn't make me cry, which is usually how I know that a book is amazingly good, I often sat in a slight state of shock after reading the many terrible things that happened to poor Washington. This book made me think and think and think. But was I ever disappointed in the ending! Not just disappointed, but angry!! I wanted to stand up and throw the book across the room because Washington deserved so much more! Oh well, nothing is perfect. But do read this one, it's a very important story that I know will stick with me for a long time. ( )