The good
- A sweeping narrative on slavery and racism that follows one family’s descendants across multiple generations and multiple continents through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
- Good writing.
- Some powerful scenes (especially the ending)
- An interesting way to see such a broad swath of history.
- An effective way to discuss the role that history and origins play in shaping your life.
The not so good
- Just as you are starting to get into the story of one set of characters, the book jumps to another, and then another, and then another, so you never feel a strong connection to any particular character and never get fully invested into what happens.
- Almost everything in the story is dark and depressing, which is of course a central point of the narrative, but when combined with the jumps between characters, it starts to feel like a slide show of sorrow, focused solely on misery, to the exclusion of everything else, including any sort of hope or growth.
- In the end, I found that I had to force myself to keep reading.
