{"id":520,"date":"2018-11-05T17:00:22","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T16:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/readerwitch.com\/?p=520"},"modified":"2018-11-05T17:00:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T16:00:22","slug":"washington-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/2018\/11\/05\/washington-black\/","title":{"rendered":"The curious case of Washington Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

Genre: adventure story.\u00a0\u2b50\ufe0fStars from Goodreads: 4.\u00a0\u2b50\ufe0fStars from me: 3.<\/p>\n

To be clear from the very beginning, I didn\u2019t finish the book. I dropped it somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

General information about Washington Black<\/em> by\u00a0Esi Edugyan<\/h3>\n

This book\u00a0is about the life and adventures of Washington Black, a man who was born a slave, became a person of science, escaped and travelled the world.<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t it sound exciting?! I thought so too. Besides, the book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018. Doesn’t it guarantee a good book? Not for me, apparently.<\/p>\n

I purchased the ebook together with the audio version. The plan was to alternate between reading and listening. The two versions are synchronised, so you can stop reading and continue listening from the same place where you stopped reading, and vice versa. Future has come!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even though I thus paid a double price for the story, I knew it would be a bigger loss if I had continued wasting my time on the book. Having dragged through Washington Black<\/em> for weeks, I finally dropped it.<\/p>\n

Not only did I stop reading it, I did it at the moment when the protagonist was in mortal danger. I. did. not. care.<\/strong> That\u2019s how generally boring it was.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so bad about Washington Black<\/em><\/h3>\n

The story<\/h4>\n

Some descriptions mentioned that Washington Black<\/em> was \u201cinspired by a true story\u201d<\/em>. I\u2019m not sure to what extent the story is true, it feels absolutely naive and sugar-coated.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The characters<\/h4>\n

There is no depth to the characters: villains are villains, good guys are good. The characters are absolutely predictable and do not seem to develop.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The writing<\/h4>\n

The writing is another curious detail of this book. It tries to be beautiful so it does sound sophisticated but quite pretentious. I see no reason for \u201cthe dying gold of morning\u201d<\/em> at a banal breakfast. To me it looks misplaced, like somebody wearing a ball gown for grocery shopping.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What\u2019s good in Washington Black<\/em><\/h3>\n

Theoretically, a story about a person fighting his way to freedom while crossing different countries and meeting different people, should be interesting.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This theory didn\u2019t work for me.<\/p>\n

Final thought on Washington Black<\/em><\/h3>\n

I\u2019m sure the book will find its readers, but I\u2019m not one of them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be clear from the very beginning, I didn\u2019t finish the book. I dropped it somewhere in the middle. Not only did I stop reading it, I did it at the moment when the protagonist was in mortal danger. Continue reading The curious case of Washington Black<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[141,151,152,233,662,663,664,665],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}