I hadn’t been familiar with Percival Everett before reading the acclaim for his new book, but he’s the author of 33 previous books, one of which ‘Erasure’ was recently included on the NYT’s Book Review’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st C.  as well as its screenplay being the recipient of an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2023.  A distinguished Professor of English at USC, a nominee for a Booker and the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and the recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize from Yale, Everett is clearly an incredible talent who had flown under my radar for all these years.  Perhaps it’s because he’s African-American, you think????  Whatever the cause, I’m thrilled I found this book and intend to dive into ‘Erasure’ down the road.

“James” is Everett’s reimaging of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as told from the standpoint of Huck’s companion on the Mississippi, the slave, Jim. And right there, the difficulty begins because the man known to Huck as Jim, the slave of Widow Watson, the illiterate, foot-shuffling man responding with ‘Suh’, “Yo suh ah” and other obsequious slave language is in reality an intelligent, strong, and deeply caring man who has taught himself to read and write and who has survived by acting and speaking like a slave in the pre-Civil War Missouri of Hannibal.

My enjoyment of Everett’s parallel version of Huckleberry Finn was greatly enhanced by my recent reading of Twain’s book.  Starting with the very first chapter in which Twain narrates Huck’s and Tom Sawyer’s pulling the wool over Jim’s eyes by moving his hat from his head to a tree while he sleeps, Everett provides James’ take.  In the former, Jim, the slave, attributes the move of the hat to witches, as Huck and Tom anticipated.  In Everett’s version of the event, James feigns sleep so the boys will leave him alone and no more believes in witches than I do.  It’s a great start to the parallel story lines which continue through most of the book but end with an abrupt disclosure which radically changes the remainder of the novel.  In Twain’s version, Huck and Jim safely return to Hannibal where Jim has been freed by the widow and where Huck resumes his schooling and living with his Aunt–in other words, everyone lives happily ever-after. In Everett’s much darker and more realistic version, the ending is very different.  A very involved spoiler alert would be required here to complete the story, so I’ll leave it at that and urge you to read the book.

Everett’s book provides one of those realistic and readable insights into the curse of slavery and the continuing disaster of racism and discrimination that is its legacy in America today.  It’s often said that you need to walk a mile in someone’s shoes to understand their take on their situation, and Everett does a fine job of putting the reader into James’ shoes.

This is an important and excellent book.