Review: Washington Black

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan

If this book has proven one thing, it is to appreciate the Man Booker Prize for selecting some of the finest contemporary fiction available. Whether a novel is on the longlist, shortlist, or is the actual winner -- Washington Black was shortlisted for the 2018 prize -- rest assured it's going to be good.

But Edugyan has shown much more with the powerful and explosive writing in her extraordinary work. Through the title character, Edugyan has shown some of the true horrors of slavery, not just in the routine dehumanization of people of color, but in the lifelong impact it has on its victims. She has shown the depravity of its systemic brutality. She has shown how it allows white people to decry its savagery while simultaneously benefiting from it.

Set in the 19th Century, the book follows George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados. It's a cruel, grueling life, and Wash is confused and alarmed when he finds he is assigned to be a manservert to the master's younger brother. He fears he will be assaulted and abused, with no way out, because he is always forced to go along. Even when he finds that Titch -- which his new master insists that Wash call him -- is not the vicious master he feared, he cannot rest easy.

"I thought of my existence ... the brutal hours in the field under the crushing sun, the screams, the casual finality edging every slave's life, as though each day could easily be the last. And that, it seemed to me clearly, was the more obvious anguish -- that life had never belonged to any of us, even when we sought to reclaim it by ending it."

Titch discovers Wash has natural artistic skills, and he encourages his talents. But he does so because he sees a benefit to his own scientific endeavours.

When a tragedy occurs on the plantation, Titch and Wash flee, leading to their adventures through America, Canada, and England. The tale is told in brilliant, colorful, descriptive language.

For instance, later in the book, Wash recalls his experience in the Canadian Arctic.

"I had been warned ... that snow was white, and cold. But it was not white; it held all the colours of the spectrum. It was blue and green and yellow and teal; there were delicate pink tintings in some of the cliffs as we passed. As the light shifted in the sky, so did the snow around us deepen, find new hues, the way an ocean is never blue but some constantly changing colour. Nor was the cold simply cold -- it was the devouring of heat, a complete sucking of warmth from the blood until what remained was the absence of heat." 

It's that writing, showing the melancholy, the bitterness, and the haunted, hunted existence that follows Wash throughout his life, that makes this book worth buying and saving, so one can read it again and again.