With resonances of the eeriness of Toni Morrison's Beloved and of the colonial inhumanity of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, James astutely meshes together a story which explores what freedom means and if it can ever really exist. Turning over The Book of Night Women's final page, one feels a horrible and sobering sense of history's nightmarish weight.
Marlon James's The Book of Night Women (Oneworld Publications) is one of those contemporary masterpieces that seems like it came out of the author's head, fait accompli. But of course it didn't. James is just a great writer, and he's conjured a complete and believable world - 18th-century Jamaica - and has got so deep inside his characters, most of them slaves on a sugar plantation, that the reading experience is immersive: any time you put the book down to, say, drive a car or get a sandwich, it's a shock. It pulls no punches, so be prepared to be knocked sideways.
An epic novel of late-18th-century West Indian slavery, complete with all its carnage and brutishness, but one that, like a Toni Morrison novel, whispers rather than shouts its horrors.
This is a book to love ... hard to pick up, even harder to put down.
* Boston Globe *
Darkly powerful
* The Plain Dealer *
Writing in the spirit of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker but in a style all his own ... an undeniable success.
* The Globe and Mail *
An exquisite blend of form and content.
* The New York Times *
I knew The Book of Night Women had me when I started waking at night to worry about its characters ... [an] accomplished, terrifying ... lacerating, literary work. It troubled and spent me, but I am grateful to him for it ... It stands in the wake of Toni Morrison's transcendent slave literature, and it holds its own. ... Sometimes we should read for comfort and bliss, and sometimes we should read for the sterner stuff that keeps us up at night.
* Washington Post *
Lilith makes even the steeliest hearts shiver with trepidation. ... a devastating epic of savage history, relentless oppression, and souls that refuse to be shackled. ... James is such a sure, humane writer ... a searing read.
* Chicago Tribune *
this moving novel is a shocking read.
* Time Out *
Brimming with drama and heartbreak
* The Literateur *
James's powerful epic depicts the ugliness of colonial life and the violence, depravity and degradation which form part of the everyday.
* The Independent *
Lilith's narration is one of the novel's strongest features, written in the vernacular and carrying its own drum-like rhythm which is as lyrical as it is hypnotic.
* The Guardian *
An exquisite blend of form and content.
* The Globe and Mail *
I knew The Book of Night Women had me when I started waking at night to worry about its characters ... [an] accomplished, terrifying ... lacerating, literary work. It troubled and spent me, but I am grateful to him for it ... It stands in the wake of Toni Morrison's transcendent slave literature, and it holds its own. ... Sometimes we should read for comfort and bliss, and sometimes we should read for the sterner stuff that keeps us up at night.
* The Plain Dealer *
Lilith makes even the steeliest hearts shiver with trepidation. ... a devastating epic of savage history, relentless oppression, and souls that refuse to be shackled. ... James is such a sure, humane writer ... a searing read.
* Boston Globe *
this moving novel is a shocking read.
* Star Magazine *
Brimming with drama and heartbreak
* Voice (Ethical Consumer) *
James's powerful epic depicts the ugliness of colonial life and the violence, depravity and degradation which form part of the everyday.
* The Guardian *
Lilith's narration is one of the novel's strongest features, written in the vernacular and carrying its own drum-like rhythm which is as lyrical as it is hypnotic.
* The Independent *
