My story behind reading James is that I wanted to read James as I liked the front cover and saw it had rave reviews. I then read that it’s based on a character from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so I then bought and read that first to help better understand the context.
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James follows the character of “Jim” from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Without spoilers, during that story, Huckleberry and Jim get parted, but you follow Huckleberry’s story. In this, we follow James, including the lead-up to the first meeting with Huckleberry.
James plot – 4.5/5
The plot of James is fascinating because some of it interweaves with that of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and being someone who read that so soon before picking this up, it was really fun to see those interlinking scenes.
However, as I noted before, this also tells the stories of James that we never heard of in Hucklberry’s tale. And I’d argue that the story that James goes on is just as interesting as the one that Huckleberry goes on.
A big message in both this and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about race and slavery. Both stories are set in the mid 1800s in the outback of Southern America – about as backwards and racist as you could get in modern civilisation back then. Thus, one of the big conversations throughout is “Why?” And this poses some really powerful storytelling from Everett.
James characters – 4.75/5
I could babble on about how much I enjoyed reading about James’ adventures but I couldn’t do so without mentioning the strength of him as a character but also the utterly loveable relationship between him and Huckleberry.
Huckleberry is far younger than James. But James is seen as simply a slave to white people. However, Huckleberry’s youth and naivety don’t allow him to understand this – to him, he just sees an adult, another human being like him.
This makes for some fantastic conversations between the pair that will have everybody laughing, welling up or feeling a lot of things at once for these two characters.
Along the way, we also meet vile people, nice people and the gamut in between, making for some truly memorable characters.
James final rating – 4.75/5
James by Percival Everett truly makes you feel. You’ll feel a range of emotions for James’ experiences and you’ll feel warmth for his relationship with Huckleberry and all the new conversations and messages that you didn’t read in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. James and Huckleberry’s pairing is truly memorable and you’ll fall in love with both while also finding yourself sickened, saddened and heartened by Everett’s additional adventures he gives James along the way. Read James – it’s brilliant.
