The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara CollinsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Reading this book was like being chased with a heavy club (from chapter to chapter). The author uses words like a blunt instrument and the story is so spellbinding that you will scuttle through those pages - fearful, excited, and hypnotized.
Francis is a mixed-race slave born on a Jamaica plantation. Her master is obsessed with proving that black people form a separate race, using bogus-science fueled by hate. She was permitted to learn to read but only as part of his sick obsession. She was forced to assist him in his barn of a study. She was then "given" to someone else.
She stands accused of murder at the start of this book and so begins the tracing back to all of the terrible things that led her to that sham of a courtroom.
The author is a genius with similes and every page has unexpected treasures of comparisons, I think, never before made.
(Words)...small and black and sharp, like little claws... indecipherable...they seemed trapped, each one shackled to the next one.
For a time, there was only the scratching of brushes against stone, like mice in a cupboard.
I was Black as a fly in butter
Lips like two sharpened knives
The london air, wet as a kiss
It is a sinister time in history and this story cuts into the reader with harsh realities but there is also a salve of love and wisdom there.
A wonderful book.
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