Book Review – Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

When the VP at my work saw me reading The World That We Knew during my break she gave me a copy of Washington Black. She had read it with her book club and thought it might be up my alley. She was right!

About The Book 📚

Publication Date: 2018

Genre: Historical Fiction

My Review

› Washington Black, a 10 or 11-year-old slave living at a sugar plantation in Barbados, knows he was born in 1817 or 1818. His mother died in childbirth and he never knew his father. His first master named him Washington Black, but most people call him Wash. Big Kit has been looking after Wash since day one. She’s tough on him but will go to the ends of the earth to keep him safe. Mr. Wilde (Titch), the master’s brother, arrives looking for a place to build his flying contraption and recruits Wash to be his personal assistant. After Titch’s father dies his mother requests him to stay at the plantation for at least a couple of years, but he has no interest in staying still for that long. After Wash is accused of murder, Titch and Wash escape the plantation. They are chased by a bounty hunter as they travel to Virginia, Labrador, and end up in the Arctic where they are separated and Wash continues on his own to Canada, England, Amsterdam, and Morocco.

› The writing style is beautiful. There are passages that I read, and re-read. As a Canadian who was born and raised in Labrador, I found this passage about snow particularly moving.

“I had been warned by Mister Ibel 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 too did the show around us deepen, find new hues, the way an ocean is never blue but some constantly changing colour.”

› However, I found the first-person perspective of a young, uneducated slave didn’t match the vocabulary he used. The second half of the book wasn’t nearly as good as the first half.

› Edugyan created characters that are never 100% good or evil, and there’s nothing I love more than a morally-grey character who believes they are doing the wrong things for the right reasons. However, I’m incredibly disappointed that this book barely passed the Bechdel Test (are there at least 2 women in the story who talk to another woman about something other than a man?).

› The ending is open-ended and many things are left unsaid and unexplained, leaving me feeling slightly unsatisfied.

› Final Thoughts
• Considering my few dislikes, Washington Black is still an inspirational story about betrayal, abandonment, hardships, friendship, love, identity, and freedom. ★★★★