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chloebethx_'s review against another edition
challenging
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
geglover's review against another edition
5.0
Probably the most powerful short book I’ve ever read.
When I picked up this book at Powell’s in Portland last year, I was interested to read it because of the short description and awards it had won, not knowing that it would provide an education in Martinique history in so few pages.
The depth of the characters, including the dog, and their individual journeys through the forest is incredible. I felt present in the slave’s mind as he pursued freedom wholeheartedly, while stressing about the man hungry dog that he knew was chasing him.
When I picked up this book at Powell’s in Portland last year, I was interested to read it because of the short description and awards it had won, not knowing that it would provide an education in Martinique history in so few pages.
The depth of the characters, including the dog, and their individual journeys through the forest is incredible. I felt present in the slave’s mind as he pursued freedom wholeheartedly, while stressing about the man hungry dog that he knew was chasing him.
kisaly's review against another edition
4.0
Beautiful language and I absolutely do not envy the difficult task of translating this work.
roxaro_o's review
3.0
Must admit I've got some FOMO about not knowing French and missing out on the author's use of language, but the translator's note does a solid job of explaining the cultural significance of his meaningful manipulation of the line separating the French language of colonizers and the descendant French Creole of the colonized.
P65 “I opened my eyes wide to see better, and the world was born without any veil of modesty. A vegetal whole in an imperious evening dew.”
The writing was often beautifully poetic. But at times, some passages were a little difficult to digest, and I found myself having to really concentrate and reread.
This novel would make a very cool animated film. No dialogue, just vibrant, striking, impressionistic art & an orchestral score.
(Impressionism would capture the enigmatic, amorphous woods)
P97 “A ravine of wonderment. Regent of eternity. Center of luminous shades. Foliage was its sky, journeys of stars pierced by shimmering brilliancies.”
P65 “I opened my eyes wide to see better, and the world was born without any veil of modesty. A vegetal whole in an imperious evening dew.”
The writing was often beautifully poetic. But at times, some passages were a little difficult to digest, and I found myself having to really concentrate and reread.
This novel would make a very cool animated film. No dialogue, just vibrant, striking, impressionistic art & an orchestral score.
(Impressionism would capture the enigmatic, amorphous woods)
P97 “A ravine of wonderment. Regent of eternity. Center of luminous shades. Foliage was its sky, journeys of stars pierced by shimmering brilliancies.”
kingkong's review
5.0
Great imagery and structure and I liked that he explains it in his own voice in the last chapter
greenej's review
5.0
Brilliant. Lush and philosophical prose entrap you in the world of the runaway slave, the hound hunting him, and the master. It is the prose that pulls you forward more than the story. The most powerful novel I've read in some time, by the master of Caribbean literature.
rozereads's review
3.0
A lot of wordplay and Creole and English. West Indies/Martinique slave plantation.
hilaritas's review
4.0
This is a hallucinatory and powerful account of the flight of a "slave old man" from his passive submission on the plantation into feral, exploding life in the forest, where his battle with his master's slavering hell-beast mastiff takes on the power of primal myth. The book goes by at a run, and Chamoiseau's prose is beautiful, disorienting, and terrifying.
Although the translation is very, very well done, I couldn't help but regret that I cannot enjoy the book in its original language. Créolité is the heart of Chamoiseau's approach, and you can sense under the surface of the English translation a playful, mercurial and churning approach to language that attempts to capture the lightning of oral storytelling in the bottle of written words. Chamoiseau plays with that unresolvable tension between the reification of written language in a novel and the fluidity of Creole use of language by Martinican conteurs, which by its very protean and assimilative approach escapes the bondage of the colonizer's tongue. The ending of the book brings a kind of post-modern interjection of the author into the work, but I found it here to be an intensifier of emotion rather than the typical distancing ploy. Great short novel that is highly recommended.
Although the translation is very, very well done, I couldn't help but regret that I cannot enjoy the book in its original language. Créolité is the heart of Chamoiseau's approach, and you can sense under the surface of the English translation a playful, mercurial and churning approach to language that attempts to capture the lightning of oral storytelling in the bottle of written words. Chamoiseau plays with that unresolvable tension between the reification of written language in a novel and the fluidity of Creole use of language by Martinican conteurs, which by its very protean and assimilative approach escapes the bondage of the colonizer's tongue. The ending of the book brings a kind of post-modern interjection of the author into the work, but I found it here to be an intensifier of emotion rather than the typical distancing ploy. Great short novel that is highly recommended.
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