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Review
"[Phillips] is a master ventriloquist, giving immediacy and voice to an impressive range of vivid characters about whom the reader cares deeply. . . . Wonderfully individual." --"San Francisco Chronicle"
"Like Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, [Phillips] writes of times so heady and chaotic and of characters so compelling that time moves as if guided by the moon and dreams." --"Los Angeles Times Book Review
""Uncommonly resourceful . . . an admirably complex and artfully wrought effort to renegotiate the staggering dimensions of the African diaspora. . . . A highly particularized web of damning circumstances, each crafted in its own distinctly styled prose . . . Crossing the River bears eloquently chastened testimony to the shattering of black lives." --Boston Globe
"Beautifully measured writing that powerfully evokes the far-reaching realities of the African diaspora. A masterwork." --"Kirkus Reviews"
"This ambitious novel amounts to a chorale. . . . Phillips's gifts are manifest and his technical prowess enlarges with each novel. . . . An impressively controlled performance." --"Chicago Tribune"
"With irony, understatement, and artful compression . . . Phillips distills the African diaspora to an essence, bitter and unforgettable." --"Entertainment Weekly"
"Memorable, convincing characters, broad vision, and evocative narrative result in a novel both resonant and deeply moving. . . . A stirring meditation on the hardship and perseverance of people torn fromhome." --"Publishers Weekly"
"Zigzagging across continents and generations, it is a fearless reimagining of the geography and meaning of the African diaspora. . . . Phillips brings an inventiveness and exacting lucidity to bear." --"Village Voice"
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Customer Reviews
self-consciously) gutted in full view of hundreds in a busy, open-plan coffee shop!!
The novel consists of four chapters sandwiched within brief introductory and concluding passages. In the introductory section, a father sells his three children - Nash, Martha and Travis - into slavery. These children become the "broken off limbs of a tree" seeking to sink "hopeful roots into difficult soil in distant lands", the protagonists of three of the chapters, scattered in both place and time. The four chapters that follow are essentially three discrete short stories and a concluding novella: the only interlinking between these disparate stories is that the protagonists share names with the three children mentioned in the novel's opening which make it questionable whether this work has sufficient structural cohesion to be termed a novel.
The first chapter relates the story of Nash Williams, a former slave returning to 'the pagan coast' of Africa, to 'civilise' and convert to Christianity natives away from Monrovia in Sierra Leone. Nash's story is told primarily through letters written in the 1830s and early 1840s to his American (white) father. These letters are beautifully written and, whilst they make pleasurable reading, I had difficulty believing that they could have been written by someone with the presumably limited educational opportunities of a former slave. Furthermore, I felt short-changed by Nash's story as there is insufficient plot or character development in what essentially is a fifty-page short story.
The second chapter describes events in Martha's life as, in order to avoid being resold, she heads West towards California in search of her daughter, Eliza Mae. This very short story includes some harrowing descriptions of the effects of slavery on a family, although again I probably wanted to spend more time with Martha.
The third chapter consists of the cabin log of a twenty-six year old captain of a slaving ship in the 1750s, interspersed with his letters home to his young wife. The young James Hamilton seems uncomfortable with his vocation and station, passed down from a brutal father who died a violent death. The journals and letters provide evidence of the general harshness of life for slaves and shipmates, as well as matter-of-fact reporting in the trading of human cargo - information which, whilst interesting, is probably part of the reader's general knowledge.
The fourth section - a novella of over a hundred pages - is not merely the most successful section of the book, but amongst the most compelling and well-written stories that I've ever read. In short, diary-style entries ranging backwards and forwards primarily through the years of World War II, the reader is treated into the insights and humanity of Joyce, a reserved, socially-awkward and unhappily married young English lady who befriends an American GI, Travis. The diary notes capture Joyce's voice perfectly. This chapter has many interesting characters - not least Joyce herself - and is packed full of incident and emotion. Despite my reservations about the structure of this work and wishing that earlier chapters were more developed, this novel is highly recommended for the exceptional quality of writing, the serious issues that it raises and - above all - for its final chapter 'Somewhere in England'.
Great job!
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