In the event that you missed it I wish to call your attention to Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth.

[hippywife]

1. Sounds intriguing, Enthusiast.

I looked and it's available at my library, and will probably place a request for it.

There aren't many comments or ratings for it on their site, but one reader gave it only a single star with the following comment, and I would love to hear your response to it:

I was utterly enthralled by this book initially; I was enamored of the language and deeply invested in the story about the people aboard a slave ship in the 1700s.

Alas, at some point after the middle of the book, the author lost me. He skipped ahead in time when I was so invested in the time in which he had put me. The reliance in the later chapters on pidgin English was wearisome and offensive.

The famous abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, was born a slave but his English was grammatically correct and as elegant as it was powerful. The idea that the white men and the Africans could only communicate by all sides using pidgin English was irritating, demeaning and distracting.

I wish the author had done it differently because before that the book had me by the heart.