Like no poetry you've ever known before, Fred D'Aguiar's novel-in-verse sweeps you up in the scintillating story of a young female slave who falls in love with the son of the plantation owner and runs away with him in search of a new life. En route they are rescued by an old man who has organised a secret underground railroad to help slaves escape, but they become separated from each other: Faith, the woman, is sold back into slavery and Christy, her lover, punished with forced labour. The novel is narrated by their son who is stuck in time until their story is told. Using the intricate rhyme-scheme of Byron's wonderfully picaresque Don Juan, D'Aguiar wittily plays with language to create poetry that is dazzling in its inventiveness whilst being utterly readable. Despite the seriousness of its subject matter, Bloodines is full of humour, satire, experiment and, above all, life. Its characters are, like the language, brim-full of energy and very sympathetic as they struggle against vicissitude. Read this book fast like a novel, savour every word like a poem, do both, the choice is yours. (20000801)
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Amazon Review
Bloodlines, the latest book by award-winning poet and novelist Fred D'Aguiar, invites us to read its title in two ways: as the "bloodlines" of inheritance, and as lines written in blood. D'Aguiar's new work, a novel in verse, deals directly with the brutish facts and festering legacy of slavery ("hoping to kill the soul/ by wrecking the body") by focusing on the "illegal passion" between Faith, a slave, and Christy, the son of a plantation owner.
Interracial sex--even now a delicate subject in the United States--becomes the centre of a multi-faceted narrative, as the consequences of their relationship is refracted through a variety of characters. The whole is mediated through the narrator, Faith and Christy's orphaned son, who becomes the personification of their terrible history: "I am the lives of slaves... The past won't let me leave." Condemned to the act of compulsive witnessing ("My cloudy head/ humming full of Slavery's towering dead"), the deathless narrator survives to see slavery mutate into other versions of bigotry: "Slavery may be buried ... Racism still breeds."
D'Aguiar's book is written in ottava rima, a complex rhyming verse form used most notoriously by Lord Byron in Beppo and Don Juan, and can be seen as a modern-day answer to Byron's dislike of "cant political, religious and moral" and to the latter poem's digressional structure. After the opening section, which recounts Faith and Christy's story, we get sections on the later lives of the now separated Faith and Christy, followed by the narratives of Tom and Stella, ex-slaves who are now part of the Underground Railroad--the secret route to freedom for escapees from the Southern states.
The book's structure allows D'Aguiar to roam freely through the inner worlds of his cast of characters: in fact his verse is most alive when dealing with the intimacy of sex and the unfettered freedom allowed by imagination. Among the most vivid passages in the book are Tom and Stella's very different dreams of an idyllic Africa, in which sensual details combine to articulate the "thinking heart" that "involves the spine, the sap of trees,/ and history." It is this insistence on the imaginative autonomy of the self that balances and counters the book's bleak architecture of violence; and in an age that has seen the resurgence of ethnic divisions and racist rhetoric, D'Aguiar's voice is a bold and necessary declaration of the specifics of love and the imagination over the crude abstractions of hatred. --Burhan Tufail
Review
A tour de force- A compelling, urgent story which is both sensual and lyrical-Marvellous (John Burnside Sunday Herald )
The bold, controversial language and the force of the narrative compel and intrigue from the start. This is a short novel with an epic personality, encompassing themes of slavery, race, love and immortality-Wonderful (Scotland on Sunday )
'D'Aguiar's lithe poetic prose has the deft focus of a camera lens-A beautiful and engaging novel in verse' (Metro ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
The bold, controversial language and the force of the narrative compel and intrigue from the start. This is a short novel with an epic personality, encompassing themes of slavery, race, love and immortality-Wonderful (Scotland on Sunday )
'D'Aguiar's lithe poetic prose has the deft focus of a camera lens-A beautiful and engaging novel in verse' (Metro ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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First Sentence
Word goes I born with a full head of weed cut by my owner and stones in my mouth she pulled before she let me take my first feed. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Word goes I born with a full head of weed cut by my owner and stones in my mouth she pulled before she let me take my first feed. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This work has an overall musicality that pulses with reggae and scat. I could only think, as I poured through the pages, of how happy I am to have been born in my time, and not to have lived through the utter desperation of slavery in the pre-bellum south.
I love the female narrative and think this was exquisitely done, and probably the most powerful of all of them, and I could have heard more from her. The end for me dropped off in intensity and focus a little, and became a little reflective, when I guess I wanted to see more details about how this offspring's life unfolded.
I think it's sad, and lovely, and playful at the sametime. Definately worth the read.
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
The latest book from celebrated poet Fred d'Aguiar is a novel in verse form relating the story of Faith, a black slave and her white lover, Christy. Spanning the years from the American Civil War to the present and showing us how little we appear to have learnt about racism and its haunting roots d'Aguiar uses words like weapons to drive his message home. As narrated by the son of Faith and Christy the novel also peels back society's attitude to mixed marriage and exposes the raw predjudice inside. Using the ottava rima verse form favoured by Byron this is a compelling and avidly readable book despite its subject matter which some may find heavy going. They should not be deterred as d'Aguiar's sparkling way with words and pin-sharp humour lift it way above the humdrum and the moribund.As the inside cover says, " read it fast like a novel,savour every word like a poem" The only addition I can make to that is return time and again to rejoice at d'Aguiar's spellbinding language and his eternal, heart felt message.
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