THE FURROWS by Namwali Serpell

Cassandra Williams, our first-person narrator, is 12 and her brother, Wayne, is 7 when Cassandra tries to rescue Wayne from drowning.  She loses consciousness on the beach from the effort.  When she awakens, she knows that Wayne is dead, but his body is nowhere to be found, and a stranger drives Cassandra home.  Closure is impossible, Cassandra’s parents divorce, and her mother forms a foundation called Vigil for the families of missing children, holding out hope that Wayne is still alive.  The remainder of the book is largely a series of Cassandra’s encounters with the now-grown Wayne, which I assumed to be dreams.  These events are all described in intricate detail, but there are similarities among all of them, not the least of which is some sort of apocalyptic disaster during the encounter.  This series eventually becomes a bit redundant, causing me to say to myself, “Here we go again.”  Then everything changes, and we are in a different narrative altogether with a different first-person narrator—a man this time, with the same name as Cassandra’s brother.  What??  The title initially refers to ocean waves but then seems to encompass other wave-like natural dangers, especially earthquakes and tsunamis, and one philosophical character describes time, not specifically as having furrows, but certainly with that implication.  So…maybe Cassandra’s encounters with her brother were not dreams but were intended to represent some alternate reality.  This book is enigmatic, especially the ending, and not always one I was eager to resume.  It was not hard to follow, though, and from time to time I can appreciate a book that I can’t completely get my head around.

JAMES by Percival Everett

This book has received so many accolades, but I just did not love it.  I did love that the author elevates Jim, the runaway slave who accompanies Huckleberry Finn on his adventures down the Mississippi River.  Jim, in this retelling, hides the fact that he can read and write and is familiar with a smattering of erudite philosophers, especially Voltaire.  He and other slaves disguise their intellect behind a mask of dialect that they employ only in the company of white people.  Even on the river, Jim becomes a slave to the white people he encounters, including the notorious con men, the Duke and Dauphin, despite trying to convince them that he is Huck’s slave.  In an unusual exchange, Jim becomes the property of a blacksmith, but a blackface minstrel group admires Jim’s singing voice and pays the blacksmith to release Jim to their custody.  They assure him he is not a slave, but yet he can’t leave the group because of their investment.   So…OK, he’s an indentured servant but with no timeline in which he’ll be free?  Jim’s creativity in trying to survive while on the run sometimes backfires, as in the case where he pretends to be the slave of another runaway, Norman, who can pass as white.  The scheme is for Norman to sell Jim so that Jim can escape and be resold again and again.  Then two of them will split the money, but I cannot fathom how they neglected to account for the possibility of Jim being beaten and shackled while in the possession of their first buyer.  Also, as in Twain’s original, Jim does not disclose until late in the book that a body found at the beginning of their journey was that of Huck’s cruel father.  Given that Huck is on the run from his father, why would Jim withhold this information when he could set Huck’s mind at ease?  I would have liked the author to have offered an explanation for this deception.  For me, the idea of this book is just way more appealing than the book itself, which drags, especially in the beginning.