The Known World by Edward Jones

Do I laugh or do I weep?
Review by Deya
Special Program Coordinator
Assistant Librarian

Have you ever finished a book and not known whether to laugh or weep? There is a satisfaction that swells your torso for having finished the book but an underlying sadness at the same time. This can be true of happy books and sad books, funny books and scary books. When it comes to this book, I'm not quite sure which of those categories it falls under. It is simply life, so it is all those things and none of them.

I cannot say this story takes place in such and such a year. It bounces around and I find myself in the 1840s, 50s, 60s, and perhaps a bit beyond. And there are so many characters that I cannot pick one and say,  "This is who the book is about." According to the back of the book, it is about Henry, a free black man who owns slaves. But Henry is dead before page 20. As he is dying, we meet his wife, his former owner, his wife's future husband, his wife's future lover, his teacher, his overseer, his overseer's wife, his father Augustus, his mother, and a slave woman who is crazy as the result of a mule's kick to the head. And that is just to name a few. 

The amazing thing about this book is that all these people have stories and we get to hear them and yet it is not the length of a Michener novel. We get to know the daughter of the slave who carves her a wooden doll because we get to hear that in her 90s she has the doll in her deathbed, we hear her say the same words she uttered at four years old, clutching the doll as a child and an old woman. Jones creates a sense of reality by connecting the characters to their pasts and their futures, letting us peep into who they are 60 years down the road, what they were like 10 years ago. These people lived.

The Known World is about things we can't quite wrap our minds around, things we don't want to admit to but that are real and happened. It is about fallibility and love despite it. There are chases and murders, fantastic journeys, tragedy and despair, laughter and souldeep love. Perhaps you will laugh, perhaps you will cry. But you'll have to read the book first to find out.

 Good for:
A full meal book experience
Reading in front of people so they'll think you're smart (It won a Pulitzer, after all)
Adult book discussions
Or just because