As much as I enjoy fluffy chick lit (and believe me, I do), books with tangible depth are just as wonderful. In fact, most times they are much more extraordinary than your usual Shopaholic installment.
I finished The Book of Negroes, an award-winning novel by Canadian author Lawrence Hill, only a few days ago and I’m still breathless from it. The Book of Negroes tells the story of Aminata, a young girl who gets abducted from her village in West Africa in the 1700s and is forced into the slave trade. The book winds through her extraordinary life from working on an indigo plantation in South Carolina to being a settler on the coast of Sierra Leone. A story that is heartbreaking and brilliant at its core, The Book of Negroes is a magnificent tale of a piece of history that, for many, is long forgotten. Hill brings the colonial slave trade alive to such an extent that I could not imagine it being written any other way. Reminiscent of Holocaust stories in its honest brutality, the novel accomplishes so much in the way of both defining history and telling an unforgettable story.
The novel is a breathtaking journey for the reader and is rather absorbing in its realness. By the end it is so tragically triumphant that it leaves the reader with immense inspiration and enlightenment, which definitely beats out a fluffy read any day.
In all truth, The Book of Negroes simply cannot be done justice through any review. Therefore, I encourage all of you to give this incredible novel a try; I guarantee that you will be just as speechless as I am.
I read it this September – this book is hands down amazing!