johnny dangerously.
How do you rate a book that is, in matters of prose and pacing and theme, excellent, but utterly fails what you, personally, want it to do? This is a problem I've wrestled with in the entirety of Robert Harris' Cicero trilogy, and at its closing, I am left unable to answer.
The book itself is entirely concerned with Cicero. Cicero's life, and Cicero's dreams, and Cicero's death. Cicero as a man, and Cicero's ambitions. It is barely interested in Rome as a polity, largely letting any commentary on the state of Rome serve as a metaphor for the state of either Germany before and during Hitler's rise to power, or a sort of warning for England– pick your least favorite PM, and Caesar is him, just as Caesar is occasionally Hitler.
I am not interested in this metaphor. I am barely interested in Cicero as a man. Cicero has received an amount of attention, since his death and during his life, that was controlled expertly from beyond the grave. The book plays with this theme a little, but it's afraid to castigate Cicero, who it places in a role of most atheistic martyrdom. Cicero's reputation is sacrosanct within the book and outside it– people love Cicero today, piling him with praise and adulation, writing fiction about him, studying his words two millennium after his death. That's the world we live in, and it's the world of the book.
And that's the scope of the book. The book doesn't want to talk about Cicero's flaws– the big flaws, the human failings, not the political missteps and gaffes– and that's usually fine for me. I try to pay attention to what a book actually wants to do, so I'm not disappointed by it failing to live up to an impossible standard that I've created in my head.
So why am I so disappointed with this book and the series in general, even though it expertly does everything it sets out to do?
The books are narrated by Tiro, an enslaved man. Tiro is possibly one of, if not the most, famous enslaved people to have lived in ancient Rome. Tiro tells this story, but it's not Tiro's story. Tiro talks about Cicero, a man who owned him, with rapturous praise. Cicero never mistreats Tiro, because Cicero is a good master. Indeed, there is almost no mistreatment of slaves throughout the entire trilogy, because then the writing would have to focus on the lives of slaves and question whether a state that allowed, endorsed, and arguably ran on slavery was moral or immoral. Harris doesn't care about that, so he skips it, but I care about it, and its total absence from this trilogy, written from the perspective of an enslaved man, feels like a yawning chasm at the heart of the story.
A promising and engaging start, the novel sadly devolves as the author clearly wants to write about, but isn't interested in, the Civil War. I've read plenty of war novels, and this book feels that disclosing the details of the war is necessary, but not very interesting. Those middle chapters drag and drag and drag.
What is prayer? What is faith? What is the division between holiness and the nature of the world? Is the world inherently innocent and pure, when untouched by man's hand? Is all love selfish? Is it possible to selfishly love god?
This is an amazing novel, but not for the faint of heart. There's no one to root for. There's very little action. It's gross and enjoys its grossness. Nothing happens like how you'd expect. Even the expectations of genre– this is nominally a historical fiction novel, or perhaps a fantasy?– are casually cast aside. When we talk about subverting tropes, we rarely describe them in the way this novel casts them aside. No one is purely good or evil, but they're not ‘grey' heroes written with sympathy and nobility. Everyone has their own way of looking at the world, and it's all valid, and that is perhaps the greatest tragedy of Lapvona.
No one knows anything. They just know how they feel.
Is god an unkind father, a silly lord or a somber man, a fool who doesn't know the world around them? Is god anything at all? Is god just what you make for yourself? This very Marxist novel never sneers at faith, but it does take a keen interest how, exactly, one can live if your entire life is hinged upon an opiate. While I wouldn't call the book anti-religious so much as highly skeptical of organized religion (specifically in the way it was constructed– or believed to be constructed, it's not like this book is concerned with historical accuracy– in a feudalist medieval period), I can say this book will disappoint more dogmatically religious readers. But I also think that's kind of what it's trying to do in the first place. Just as it's trying to wiggle out of the expectation of genre, of needing sympathetic characters, of having coincidence converge happily, of reunions and rebirth and positive character growth.
Read this novel if you want a dark– and darkly funny– view of a very troubled town, with very fractured, selfish and cruel people populating it. And read it if you want to find out how these awful little humans are still, somehow, deserving of love.
An excellent and comprehensive look at an underappreciated and rarely acknowledged people. While the book has a habit of repeating its conclusions, they bear repeating. Mercifully easy to read even if you aren't an academic– the work is dry but never obtuse. A must-read if you have any interest in the Roman non-elite.
I don't super love noir, or detective fiction, or mystery novels, or whodunnits, but somehow this book just worked for me. I think it's the uniqueness of its focus. For all the hundred thousand historical novels about the middle ages, how many are about the urban poor? And how many acknowledge the savagery and classism of the rich? I'm easily won over by that novelty.
A lovely little novella about the evils of academia, this is a lovely answer to all of the weird self-obsession that tends to come with the dark academia genre. At no point does the novel glorify the horrors professors often put their students through, the obsession, the anxiety; it holds a mirror up to the selfish thrill of self-annihilation and asks us to care for ourselves before our careers, because that is so much harder and so much more painful.
I was immediately reminded of Cornwell and Forrester in reading this– Hornblower's interest in Whist and Cornwell's amazing ability to set the scene are clearly influences on this novel. However, I found it largely a disappointment; so much of the narrative is tied up in the main character, Thomas Hill, and the problem with Thomas Hill is that he has no flaws. He faces consequences, yes, but all his victories come to him easily, through luck, chance, or skill. The longest struggle he faces is decoding a cipher that, in real history, wouldn't have been decoded for another couple hundred years. In the face of that, struggling with it for a few weeks is negligible. Well written, but ultimately forgettable, with a disappointing lack of any meaningful character development.
Ultimately, this horror / dystopia / alt history severely pulls its punches with regards to the ending. It's barely spooky, barely horrific, and so light on the dystopian and alt historical detail that the whole thing feels unsatisfying. The use of post notes to render unreliability and worldbuilding is a pretty interesting one, however.
My edition of this novel had an introduction by NK Jemisin; this pre-disposed me to like it since Jemson's introduction is half critique. She found the novel difficult to get into and hard to believe. She's right on one count; Lauren doesn't read like a teenager, however smart for her age– she reads as an adult's idea of how a smart teenager ought to act. However, I think that's kind of the point. This is a parable, after all, and the religion Lauren creates will, if successful, have Lauren as its central prophet. Prophets don't get to be kids. Was Jesus Christ a believable child? He seemed a bit preachy.
I think this novel is an excellent litmus test as to whether or not someone can appreciate SF that is at once both hard and light. Yes, all the guns and ammunition works as it should, but the ‘sharing' makes little ontological sense. All the decisions Lauren make are correct and logical– and that's kind of ridiculous for an eighteen year old. The book functions as a religious parable; don't worry so much about the details, only focus on the meaning at its heart.
Is Julius Caesar Hitler?
In the book succeeding this one, Robert Harris writes: “As Dictator encompasses what is arguably - at least until the convulsions of 1933-45 - the most tumultuous era in human history [...]”
Does Robert Harris think Julius Caesar is Hitler?
For the record, I don't think Julius Caesar is Hitler. I think Hitler is Hitler, and Julius Caesar is Julius Caesar. But writing Caesar as Hitler is a trap that Harris seems to fall into. It creates some logistical problems with the writing of the novel. You can't have Roman Hitler doing good things, or being kind. When Hitler– I mean, Caesar?– institutes reforms that enable the Corn Dole, the system with which every Roman citizen became entitled to grain, Cicero - the hero, the anti-Hitler - must oppose it, and the act must be evil. Because Hitler did it. I mean, Julius Caesar.
This is a well-written novel, on the prose level. It is consistently compelling, and excellently paced. I was riveted for almost all of it, which is saying something considering how bad my ADHD has been lately. But Harris' insertion of modern morality makes the pieced awkward at best on a political level, which is a shame because these are, in the end, political novels about political machinations. Politics is an area rife with moral greyness, where you must make compromises in order to pass legislation, where you have to get in bed with people you'd rather not. For the most part, Harris understands this, and how he depicts it slowly eating away at Cicero's morals and self-respect is compelling as hell! But the backbone of this novel is the fact that Julius Caesar is Hitler of the highest degree, which is somewhat specious considering the total lack of interest this book has in writing Roman atrocity. Because Rome in this book is basically London, and the Senate is (modern) Parliament, we can't focus on the things that detract from that analysis - the slavery, the rampant expansionist colonialism, the horrendous sexism, the legalized rape. It means Julius Caesar is Hitler without any atrocity that brings Hitler's ills into the world. He's simply Hitler because Hitler is bad, because because.
It's an Achilles heel on an otherwise strong novel, a footfall made weak by an elegantly made body. It's a shame I can't rate this novel higher, because I truly enjoyed it.
I try very hard to rate things with the scope of the material in mind– essentially, if you're reading Lord of the Rings and are disappointed by Aragorn's lack of tax policy, that's on you, not the author (and conversely, if you're reading A Song of Ice and Fire and disappointed by the wealth of violence, that's also on you). Usually this is pretty simple, but this book has an odd scope that left me occasionally at a loss.
This book is written from the perspective of Cicero's enslaved secretary, Tiro. One would expect, that the scope would include things like Tiro's life, his experiences being an enslaved person– yet it's extremely clear Robert Harris has no interest in this perspective. He wants to write about Cicero, and thus Tiro, his narrator, is relegated to a kind of third person perspective granted omniscience by time. Tiro is more of a literary device than a character. Is this a strike against the book? Probably?
Robert Harris is a deft enough writer to make me occasionally forget this giant hole in his work - which is saying something, considering how perpetually hungry I am for the perspective of the non-elite (as Jerry Toner puts it) in the Roman world. His political writing is sharp and fierce, and the story never drags, even when Cicero is kicking his feet in boredom. Tiro is a deft narrator, because Tiro is really just Harris in a tunic, explaining the intricacies of Roman law, politics, and the painful insertion of human flesh and soul between.
I've said before that all stories dealing with Roman history, but this period especially, can dip easily into the well of tragedy, and Harris' writing takes great advantage of that. I find Cicero, as a historical personage, irritating at best, and yet I found him a grand character here. Harris makes sure that you don't have to actually like Cicero to like these books, you just have to be interested in his career, and I admit I wasn't before– I started reading this book months ago and straight up gave up. I'm glad I came back to it, because with a fresher mind, the writing really sparkles.
If you want a book with political intrigue that is beautifully written, elegantly staged, and described with a sharp eye for detail, you'll love this novel. If you're looking for a keen eye into the life of the enslaved, well, you won't find it here.
I really enjoyed the first book, so I was genuinely surprised by the precipitous dip in quality between novels.
I don't know if I'm just especially sensitive to pacing, but this book's pacing was just awful, treacle-slow even though the fact that the characters are running out of time– have little time to begin with, to save the lives of almost a hundred people!– is constantly remarked upon. The investigation crawled at a snail's pace until the final ~15% of the book, in which all was revealed in monologues (something I don't generally love but understand is occasionally a staple of mystery fiction). The denouement happens off screen. The final few chapters are retrospectives where characters discuss events that have already happened for the benefit of the reader. The ending is ultimately saccharine, far too much for a book that is trying to highlight the evils of slavery.
Ultimately, the book felt weirdly like a cozy mystery, which is not what I go to for fiction set in Ancient Rome.
I was thoroughly disappointed. If the next book in the series wasn't about an event in Roman history I find interesting, I'd tap out completely.
This is neither exhaustive nor focused, but that's kind of the point. This is a pleasant read if you need something to kind of settle into and you want it to be about the classical period. Unlike a lot of pop history of this type, it cites sources very directly and hides as little in footnotes as possible – I find personally find it helpful to read a book and see ‘according to Plutarch' rather than a citation at the end that I'm much less likely to remember. Unfortunately, like a lot of pop history of this type, it mashes hundreds of years of culture together indiscriminately, and we're never entirely sure what period of antiquity we're talking about unless it's immediately relevant to the answer. That said, the good is greater than the mediocre, and I plan to read the ‘sequel' the next time I need some background listening (I highly recommend the audiobook) that's still educational and not a podcast.
I occasionally grow excessively tired of historical fiction about ancient Rome; it's all shining columns and glorious empire. What feeds the empire, one never seems to ask, but Steven Saylor breaks the trend. His Rome is dirty, not in a gritty grimdark way, but in the naturalistic bent that claims all cities, modern and pre-modern. His Rome is the center of an empire that knows something is rotten at its heart, but cannot keep itself from consuming the weak, the poor, the enslaved, the displaced. This is a Rome worth reading about, even if, at times, it's a little too neat.
There are certain ‘off' historical details, as in any historical fiction; all of them were, I believe, included to further the point of the novel: the vices of imperialism, the way corruption erodes every corner of the world.
Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC in return for a fair review. Sorry for reading it in one sitting.
Weird, lyrical, unhinged, whip-smart, extremely painful. This book is difficult to describe, but that's a compliment; it's complex and refuses to compromise, while still having highly engaging and readable prose. Most experimental / poetic novels are a little too obtuse for me, but Rumfitt's eye for prose and person always sits well.
In the end, I think I liked it less than Tell Me I'm Worthless, though I don't really think that's the book's fault. While it begins with (helpful!) content warnings, it doesn't really go into enough detail for me (I'm fine with books not having content warnings, for the record, but this book's CWs were a bit vague). In the end, it dwelled on subjects I personally find incredibly gross. Not morally suspect, not bad, not wrong, just, for me, subjectively, gross. And that will inevitably make me like a book less, no matter how well it's written.
And Brainwyrms is incredibly, startlingly well written. It's at least as good as Tell Me I'm Worthless, perhaps better in how it expands its scope and aims. The book has a lot more to say on a wide range of issues, but still hits the topic home. If you disliked the unsubtlety and long rambly prose style of TMIW, though, this book is similar. Personally, I find that a success; I love Rumfitt's work and her style.
For those interested, the content warnings that I felt would have personally helped me with this book: watersports, scat, bugs / parasites, transformation into bugs.
I don't really expect much of books titled and marketed like this, which is a shame, because this kind of book is exactly my preferred kind of pop history. Following with the trend of Ian Mortimer's ‘Time Traveler's Guide' books, this takes a similar tract, and introduces a (fake) Roman who somehow still lives in (some period of) Rome and is writing to the (real) author of this book as though he were only the translator. It's a fun conceit to get someone familiar with the subject and comfortable reading more. This guide is doubly valuable because it illuminates an issue very few people think much of– the millions of enslaved people who existed in the Roman Empire.
One star off simply because the book over-generalizes at times; if you're using this with the intention of researching facts for a specific period, the book moves around in time quite a bit, so you can easily get facts mixed up. Was it legal for slave owners to torture their own slaves during the republic, the early empire, the late empire? If you're looking for those kinds of concrete answers from this book, you're liable to end up confused. But if you're looking for a general introduction, a place to start your research, so you can know what questions to ask, this little history is perfect.
Just try not to fantasize about strangling Marcus Sidonius Falx too much; it'll distract you from the text, and, after all, he isn't real. (Cato the Elder, however, was very real, and it's to history's great shame that he was capable of dying only once.)
An end note for moralists: The book is itself very obviously anti-slavery, but it seeks to illuminate not only the methods and means of slavery within the Roman empire, but also the attitudes of patricians with regards to slavery. This perspective is valuable as the overwhelming majority of information on slavery is from a patrician perspective; anyone researching further into the subject will encounter people like Falx. Just in case this isn't clear from the ‘Falx's' writing, however, each chapter has an endnote written by Tobler in-character as himself that dispels many of the myths and biases ‘Falx' trucks in. If you want a more even-keeled work that cuts out the opinions of the Roman ruling class, check out Popular Culture by the same author.
In terms of prose, this book is a little dodgy– first person present rarely works, and here it's occasionally grating, and often distracting. But don't let that stop you from reading the work.
I think it's impossible for this book not to be compared to Elodie Harper's Wolf Den series, and while each have their strong and weak points, I think this book comes out stronger in terms of literary worth and political analysis. The story is short and to the point, about power, about hierarchy, about colonialism. Rome is an animal that feeds on the weak, and so to be strong is to eventually be corrupted by this influence– not because of capitalism, or because of inequality, or because of any one abstract principle; the book posits that injustice is inevitable in a system that is built on injustice. The tools this system uses– colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, slavery, classism, sexism– are systematic and important and innate, but they are legs of a spider.
And yet, is life worth living? Yes. Is it worthwhile to try? Yes. Is collective action, friendship, love, honor and hope, worthwhile? Yes, always.
Despite having an explicit rape scene (something Elodie Harper occludes rather than reveal with her prose) I find the book much more hopeful than The Wolf Den. The use of a first person narrator telling us the end of his story (similar to Graves' I, Claudius) serves not as a clever narrative device, but as a balm. We know he'll make it out. Does it really matter how?
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for a fair review:
I love Caitlin Starling's horror novels, because I love her pacing. She starts as close to the action as possible, and only includes details relevant to the plot. Both The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence are strong yet lean novels. I'm never bored, and I have trouble putting them down.
So I was a little disappointed when I got five chapters into Last to Leave the Room and found myself bored. Nothing's perfect, though, so I kept going to chapter 15, where I felt like things were finally happening. They weren't. I'll be honest, if I hadn't gotten this book off NetGalley, I may not have finished it.
The thing that makes Starling's books work, for me, is the relentless focus on necessary detail combined with cutting the wheat from the chaff. I never feel like things haven't progressed in a chapter, like things aren't developing. Yet that's a huge problem in Last to Leave the Room. Once the delicious joy of reading Tamsin's neuroses wears off, there's a lot of detail I just don't care about, and the detail I do care about is spread thin with incremental development. I never cared about the node project Tamsin was working on, perhaps because there's precious little detail about it in the actual novel. It's a thing that Tamsin has to deal with to justify her deteriorating mental state, but it's very vague within the novel. Maybe I missed something, but considering how lush with detail The Death of Jane Lawrence is with medical gore and The Luminous Dead is with cave diving, I doubt it. This book ultimately feels like it was originally a novella that publishers wanted stretched out to novel length. In the end, it feels boring and empty, which is the exact opposite of what I go to for a Caitlin Starling novel.
That said, I think it is of great interest to anyone who really, really enjoys unreliable narrator POV, especially when that POV is a very ‘problematic' woman. That just wasn't enough for me, personally, to make the book shine.
Recently, I watched American Graffiti with a friend. Afterward, both us found the film dissatisfying for a number of reasons. Discussing it, my friend pointed out that it had been released not long after the date it takes place in-universe; the action happens in 1962, and the film was released in 1973. Ten years feels like a very short period of time to hang a nostalgia picture on. What changed so much between the early 60s and the early 70s?
I posited: not much in reality, but the intervening decade required white people to reckon with the idea that America was not pure, and politics were inherent to every action one takes. Of course, this lesson is hard to stick with; isn't it easier to pretend there was a mythical time when the world was innocent, and nothing was political? To misquote a peddler of this misery: A softer, gentler time.
If you want to read a book that will tell you what really happened in the Manson murders, or the secret truth of the Manson trial, this book will not help you. Tom O'Neill refuses to twist facts to suit theories, and this is to his credit. His research is in-depth, he doesn't make definitive connections where he lacks the evidence, and he doesn't make knowing assertations to the very notable coincidences and connections he uncovers, either. O'Neill does his best to humbly and without bias report what his findings uncover, and he mostly succeeds where matters of humility and bias are concerned. He succeeds completely in his in-depth research of anything and everything related to the Manson Family before and after the murders, regardless of where his research takes him.
There is a nonzero chance that the Warren Commission, the Manson trial, and MK Ultra, have some limbs in common in a centipede of government corruption happily swept up and hidden by the US Government. There is a nonzero chance Manson was some kind of government informant, and this was actively covered up during the trial. There is a nonzero chance Manson was not actually some kind of master puppeteer, and really just drugged his followers to the gills to get their compliance and manufacture their consent. There is a nonzero chance that Charles Manson was actually a competent musician and / or lyricist. There is a nonzero chance Vincent Bugliosi is a lying sack of shit.
But can the book prove these things definitively? Tom O'Neill wisely admits that no, he can't prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He shows us his research– his incredibly in-depth and informative research– and ultimately lets us decide. (Well, he can and does prove that Vincent Bugliosi is a lying sack of shit, but those are my words, not his.)
So what does this book definitively prove? It proves that America before 1970 was not a world of innocence and dreams. Things were neither softer nor gentler. The CIA was a deeply corrupt organization that seems to have spent half its time covering up its own villainy; the FBI was just as bad; police forces were happy to help them when they weren't busy falling over their own shoelaces in displays of staggering incompetence. People in power knew they were in power, and would do whatever they liked to hide that fact.
This book will teach you about the horrifying abuses of the 60s, and how they interlocked because government was an atrocious boy's club that would not have blinked an eye at the murder, rape and abuse Manson trucked in, if he'd only been a government employee.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for a fair review:
I'm not a Tolkien superfan, and I'm definitely not a Tolkien scholar. While I like his work, I find some of his prose a little too esoteric to always fully comprehend. Yeah, I've read more than just The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I have my limits. Still, I want to understand all the interlocking references, meanings and backstories throughout his works. Previously, I turned to several frequently contradictory wiki websites and occasionally asked reddit. It was a low and grinding process that made it hard to quickly check references.
This book is meant to fix that problem. It's not a glossary or a long list of names, it's a comprehensive guide for someone who knows something about Tolkien's Legendarium, but not everything. I imagine it will also be a good resource for people who are largely familiar with his entire work, but want a reference or a refresher that doesn't just remind, but explains.
Having all the information easily available in consistent prose, in chronological order, helps lay bare connections between stories that may have been difficult to glean earlier, with the stories spread out in multiple books, over the multiple different prose styles Tolkien employed. In general, I can't praise the book enough for being as chronological as possible. For the first time, I finally fully understand the different Ages constantly referenced in Tolkien's work, and I've been familiar with it for years and years.
The book also does an excellent job of drawing parallels– when we run into a story that will have important ramifications later, that's mentioned. When we run into a story that's referenced elsewhere, it's noted. Motifs and themes are elaborated on as well– the repeated references to floods, the difference between north and south, etc. The book analyzes as well as explains, making it an excellent beginner's guide and refresher. The wording is clear and precise.
There are some things that fans may not like, though I can understand why they are there. This is meant to be a guide, so it answers questions that are often accepted as ambiguous or unanswerable by fandom at large (it comes down strongly on one side of the Balrogs-Wings debate, for example). It also features extremely minimalist illustrations, which may seem odd for fans more accustomed to the lush maximalism of most Tolkien depictions. This is, I believe, ultimately a good choice: the illustrations are meant to clarify information, not distract the reader, but it is a marked change from how Tolkien's works are usually visually depicted.
Ultimately, I think it's a wonderful guide, and I highly recommend it to anyone who struggles to keep all of the legendarium in mind, or simply wants a refresher that's more comprehensive than a glossary.
I feel strange for not having more to say about this book, other than it's genuinely some of the best speculative fiction / fantasy / scifi / horror (pick one) I've read in years. It's a smooth, sleek little novel that knows exactly what it's doing and does it. While it's not perfect, I can't think of any flaw great enough to bring up in this review.
I think what I appreciate most about this novel is how much it trusts its readers, how confident it is with what it's trying to do. The twists aren't mindfucks, all reveals are telegraphed well in advance. Every change seems earned, all the dread is meaningful, and in the last sliver of the novel it goes from genre to literary, elegantly straddling both qualifiers to say something interesting, detailed, new, and worthwhile about identity, colonialism, gender, and medicine.
I cannot recommend it enough if you like a story bright with darkness, full of intention, inventive prose, lush worldbuilding, and smart narration.
I don't go for most media about slavery, for the same reason I don't touch the Holocaust. When I was little, as one of the only Jewish children in my elementary and middle school, atrocity was shoved down my throat. I was expected to be okay with it. It was my history, after all. When I watched narratives about slavery (inevitably written and directed by white people), I saw the same lurid fascination with martyrdom and pain that I saw in Holocaust movies, in Holocaust books. Atrocity was entertainment for people, and I didn't want to see its implications: that to be as good and worthy as WASPs, people had to come from a legacy of torture. The torture needed to be replayed endlessly. See the bad go down again.
This book dispenses with those themes quickly and easily. People are not ‘good' for their suffering. There is horror, and that is never shied away from. But its depiction is not the point. What cruelty does to someone, how it twists them inside, that's far more important. Cora is not a smiling martyr, she does not exist to make us all feel better about the present moment. She has her moments of selfishness, of unsmiling wrath, of twisted bitterness and uncharitableness. And who could blame her? Certainly not me.
This book asks: Who built America? We know who stole it, but who built it? Who put their labor into it? We know who stole the labor, but who made America?
People like Cora, who were never perfect, who never had any responsibility to serve as a model, whose existence is not to educate. She– and by extension, this book– is not here to make anyone feel better about themselves. And for that, the book made me feel, just slightly, at peace with history. Pain is not a model, so we should not rely on it to teach.
Finally among other free blacks, Cora learns to enjoy living, to fight against fear. Pain taught her nothing. Cora's kindness is not for the benefit of white people, so they can be forgiven by the dead. Her kindness is hard-won, something she fought for, something she had to make room for within herself. Her kindness for herself.