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.
Rating: 3 stars
Yevgeniy Brikman
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