what i'm reading: three retellings of classics: julia (1984), james (huckleberry finn), finn (huckleberry finn)

When I first heard about Julia, Sandra Newman's retelling of George Orwell's 1984 from Julia's perspective, I wasn't sure I would read it. Orwell is one of my very top writers, and 1984 is, for me, a foundational work. It's one of the few books I've read multiple times, and every time I read it, I find more in it. Did I want to revisit it with another author? Knowing that the Orwell estate approved Newman's use of the original, and being drawn to the words "feminist retelling," I decided I would.

I would have been foolish to skip it. Julia is a gripping, suspenseful, devastating look at women's lives under a totalitarian state. It intersects with Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (more the brilliant TV series than the book) and some other dystopian novels, and is simultaneously true to the Orwell masterpiece.

Julia is, in a sense, more fully fleshed out than 1984. Sandra Newman has a huge body of dystopian work in which to situate Julia. In Orwell's day, there was no genre called "dystopian fiction". Not that there weren't other dystopian novels -- this page from Miami Dade College has a good overview of earlier works, many now obscure. But dystopian fiction was not the cluttered field it is now, with at least a dozen subgenres, and hundreds of forgettable, derivative knock-offs.

1984 is dystopian in the sense that The Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders are YA novels. They can be thought of as proto-genre, or the grandparents of the modern genre. So reading Julia post Hunger Games and Divergent and Uglies and and and and... has a wholly different effect and impact.

More importantly, Julia explores what is absent from 1984: the plight of women in the totalitarian (or simply authoritarian) state: the control of our reproduction. Much of it already exists, in the U.S. and in dictatorships and fake democracies around the world, and the details that might not exist are merely extrapolation. Similarly, Julia also makes the reader reckon with the features of Orwell's dark future that have come to pass -- the surveillience state, the re-writing of history. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Newman, writing now, can more fully connect our world to this future dystopia. How did we get here? What opportunity is there to re-write the future? Is it too late? Delving into Julia's childhood offers some possible answers.

The climactic chapter of this book is one of the most page-turning, pulse-pounding sequences I've ever read. Granted, most of my reading is not of the pulse-pounding variety, but the penultimate scenes left me gasping.

I highly recommend Julia, but if you haven't read 1984, I hope you will do that first. 

James

Coincidentally, I read James immediately before reading Julia. James is a retelling of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the point of view of Jim, the enslaved person who has escaped his bondage and is on the run with Huck.

This novel, too, is devastating. It brings you so close to the horrifying reality of chattel slavery that at times it is painful to read. Where it differs from Julia, however, is that it is also devastatingly witty and downright funny. Everett employs humour to send up the idiocy of the slavers and the white world in general. This is marvelous, and brings James closer to Huckleberry Finn and Everett closer to Twain. 

Everett also offers an unexpected plot twist that aligns perfectly with some of the central themes of Twain's masterpiece. I loved this. I also recalled the themes of Russell Banks' Rule of the Bone. (Curious? Read it.)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as you may know, is often "challenged" by parents seeking to keep it out of school libraries and off class reading lists. Part of this is based on Twain's use of the word nigger throughout the book. I was pleased that Everett doesn't answer to that parochial mentality. Surely when a slaveowner is referring to his human "property," he is not going to use a polite term or a euphemism. Writing around this truth would only dilute the power of the book. 

Similarly, when referring to the sexual assaults that enslaved women (and no doubt, many men) were subjected to on a regular basis, Everett uses the word rape. Although there were one or two places where I questioned if the victims would have known that word, I was very grateful to see it there on the page, with no sugar-coating and no qualifiers. 

Finn

A few years ago, I read Finn, Jon Clinch's 2008 debut novel, the story of Huckleberry Finn's abusive, alcoholic wretch of a father. Pap (as he is called in Huck Finn) is only a minor character in Twain's book, but the abuse he visits on Huck is well known to everyone in the community, and a prinicpal motivator in Huck's "adventures". 

Who was this man? What made him so mean, so reprehensible? Why was he so awful to Huck? In Finn, Clinch imagines the answers. He creates a terrifying and wholly believable portrait of how a man is reduced to degradation. He even manages to induce a bit of sympathy in the reader. Every abuser has a trauma story of their own, and Pap is no exception.

The author doesn't defend Finn or his actions. He just imagines how he came to pass. Clinch also creates some brilliant suspense and plot twists. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Clinch followed Finn with Marley, an alternate-point-of-view of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I didn't do well with this one, but I think I may try again.

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This fiction "what i'm reading" trio is brought to you by meaningful, complex nonfictions exploring a topic of great importance to me. In other words: I am struggling mightily with another post, needed a break from it, and this was the result.