Evocative.
That was the word that kept coming to my mind in the first half of Esi Edugyan's Booker Prize nominated novel Washington Black. This is the first time I've ever read a novel set in the West Indies where I felt like I was there. And everything made sense. And I could see it in my mind (which happens rarely when I read) and I could feel the heat and I could sense the fear.
And when the story moved on to the Artic and Canada I felt the same way. She was able to evoke the cold and the blinding snow and the sense of the vastness.
It was a delight to my senses.
The plot was pretty good too. Washington Black, a slave born on the plantation Faith in Barbados, is the eponymous title character of this novel. As a young boy he is chosen to become the personal servant and assistant to the brother of the plantation owner, whom he is invited to call Titch. Titch is an early 19th century scientist who, at that moment, is interested in building a balloon that can cross the Atlantic. Through a series of events that I feel no need to spoil, Titch and Washington (or Wash, as he is called) end up escaping Barbados in the balloon and embarking on a series of adventures that take them all the way to the Artic.
But is Titch really the enlightened fellow that we would like him to be or is he just using Wash? And why can't Wash move on and forget about Titch after they part ways? These are the questions posed in the second half of the novel. The second half is much less evocative (or maybe I've just read too many novels set in London) but is where Wash, still young but an adult, begins to ask these questions. And we the reader ask them too. And if you are like me you have arguments with yourself and with Edugyan about it.
This is a novel of ideas and the questions that are raised are good questions, ones that I'll be thinking about for a while. The characters are well drawn. She doesn't answer all of our questions about them but gives us enough to see them and understand them and care about what happens to them.
I will say that the plot of the novel does rely on us believing a number of coincidences. (All novels rely on coincidence to move the plot along; a great writer makes us forget that). A few times I rolled my eyes. But then I shrugged and moved on - they didn't really affect my enjoyment.
My only complaint about the entire novel is the very last paragraph. I won't say too much other than that I like my novels with definitive endings that I understand. But up until that last paragraph, I was hooked.
