Best book all year

The Invention of Wings
by Sue Monk Kidd

This book is a fictionalized history of Sarah Grimke and her black slave Handful in the years 1792 through 1840 or so. I am so not competent to write a review on this. I can't vouch for the research or the reality of the time and place or the likeliness of her speculations--I can only say it seems correct and her explanations in the afterward seem honest and reasonable. She points out the many places where she deviated from historical facts and she's very honest at admitting which people were imaginary--albeit plausible--and which were somewhat real but not real to the degree she described.

It makes me uneasy, her playing around with the facts so cleverly and a little bit loosely. I'd have felt better if it had been a work of pure fiction, with completely made-up names and places, "inspired by the life of Sarah and Angelina Grimke." Her use of the real-life slave revolt of 1822 was unsettling--the historian in me doesn't like knowing that my understanding of these real-life events has been colored by fiction.  But I have to admit that fiction is the absolute best way to make people feel and smell and breathe historical events. Being there--there's nothing like it. As the cliche goes, "You had to be there."  And while listening to this book, you are.

And, obviously, I loved it.  As much as one can possibly love hearing about a time and place where neither blacks nor women were considered full human beings.  Women were treated like children--weak, foolish immatures who needed to be carefully led through the difficult facts of life. And blacks weren't human at all--they were treated like very clever farm animals, hard to train and easy to spoil and totally dependent on the firm guidance of their masters in the smallest of matters.  What a massive amount of brainwashing must have been required to maintain that attitude!  How could a empathetic person ignore the thought that when slaves acted like men and women, they might actually be men and women?  How could one explain the expressions in their eyes, seemingly so human?  Eyes like humanity's soul, peeping out of a lidded prison?

Easy, I guess.  We stupid white people have no problem explaining all kind of shit we do.

So what to say about a work of art I'm incompetent to say anything about?  This--every single person in it was a real person with motives and blind spots and hopes and dreams. Every single episode had tension and drama.  Even the few unbearably sweet episodes had a faint backdrop of horror--a chance of an ending that might have been horrible.  When the bad endings did break out, they were all the worse for your anticipation; and when they did not, you could pause for a minute and sigh, satisfied; grateful such beauty could occur in the midst of such terrible tragedy.

How's that for an impartial review?