Scottsboro: A Novel [Paperback]

Quite simply one of the best things I have read in years. It chronicles one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the USA. Scorsboro is a fictionalised version of true events which took place in the American Deep South in the 30s.
As I read the book I began to feel more and more strongly that it should be included in the English Curriculum of all schools. A very powerful and disturbing account of real people and real events, told in a simple, clear and unmelodramatic way, which probably increases the horror of the injustice faced as a matter of daily life for so many people from the South.
An absolute tour de force which should be read alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men and other classics of the period. It makes Maya Angelou's chronicles of her experiences (and I love Angelou), seem easy by comparison.
Read it!

Scottsboro is a novel based on the true story of a trail in the town of the same name in Alabama in 1931. A trial which "the principles that, in the United States, criminal defendants are entitled to effective assistance of counsel and that people may not be de facto excluded from juries because of their race." Two white girls had accused nine young black men of raping them on a freight train back in times when if you were black sometimes you didn't even need a trial you could just be hung by the locals and it was overlooked by the law and judicial system. However these cases made it to the courts even though "the juries were entirely white, their attorneys had little experience in criminal law, and the judge gave them no time at all to prepare their cases". I am quite ashamed to admit that I had never heard of what is such an incredibly important case in history.

The fictional story is told through two voices. The first of which is Ruby Bates, one of the girls who accused the boys of rape and then proceeded to change her mind several times. Her story tells of the desperate poverty and life that she led as a penniless prostitute and how the infamy of the case changed her fortunes and her life and yet she knew what she was doing was wrong. Through her eyes we get the tale of a good girl gone bad due to circumstance and how when things get much to big for her she tries to do right but can she change a media whirlwind completely beyond her control. The second voice is that of one of the media, journalist Alice Whittier. However unlike the other journalists who are interested in sensationalizing the whole case, Alice is looking at it from the perspective of `what if these young men are innocent' this doesn't by any means make her a `heroine of the piece' though. In fact though Alice is a wonderful factual voice for the whole plot and all the key facts and twists in the case, I never felt like I really got to know her which would be my one main criticism of the book overall.

Some people have said the book reads as non fiction, which I would partially agree with, bar the incredibly well created, depicted and carried off character of Ruby Bates who I didn't like but wanted to follow and read more of. I thought that the other girl Victoria, who also accused the boys of rape, was also incredibly well crafted and incredibly dislikable. I can see how a book couldn't be carried by just these two though as you do need the facts and the twists. It's an amazing case (I have included a picture of the boys below as I found it made it even more real) which undoubtedly people should know much, much more about and I think in a market where a book like Kate Summerscale's `The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' has done so well a great book like this with find a huge amount of people who will really enjoy the book like I did.

Though this isn't usually my sort of thing, I picked it up based on it having been shortlisted for the Orange Prize. And what an impulse buy! Scottsboro has characters so utterly real - complete with fundamental flaws and complicated motivations - who inhabit the shocking true story at the centre as if they were already there. Feldman's apparent adherance to the real events that form much of the plot does this story justice. Too often 'true fiction' takes too many liberties with the 'true' part, but Feldman manages to both portray the reality of that Alabama courtroom and mold the tale enough that it is still interesting.

Alice and Ruby are both wonderful characters, and for the main part the supporting cast do very well. The one exception is abel, who I found a little dull and not very fleshed-out. This does make part of the final chapters weaker, but the finale itself is perfect (though that's all I'm saying about that).

All in all, a very very good book.