Book: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; Volume 1: The Pox Party Author: M.T. Anderson
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: a young boy is a slave, an experiment, then a rebel fighter in revoluntionary America
Like I've said before, I looove M.T. Anderson. And here he's written another very original, distinctive, disturbing book that sticks in your mind a long time after the last page turns, whether you want it there or not. And he won the National Book Award for it, so bravo! That said, this is not an easy read. It's written in impressively accurate 18th-century-style English, and it's long. Octavian and his mother, Casseopeia, are African slaves owned by a group of radical scientists and scholars called the Novanglian College of Lucidity. In the sober city of Boston, they live in opulence and are treated as exotic royalty, but Octavian must weigh his food and feces. When their fortunes shift and a harsh new benefactor takes control, the experiment of Octavian and his mother takes a dark turn: scientific proof of the inferiority of the African races. I won't give away the details, but some horrible things happen, and Octavian's personal account goes silent. The story picks up in secondary sources and through the letters of a revolutionary soldier as Octavian ends up with the man's unit. The history depicted is slightly alternative, but similar enough to the history books to make readers take a good hard look at what they think they know about the American Revolution.
The book is chock full of themes of human rights, freedom, friendship, and the fuzziness of right and wrong, good and bad in the American Revolution-- and by extension, the whole American experience? Or any world-changing conflict? Let's say yes. After all, that's the sort of thing they hand out National Book Awards for.
Part Two is coming (sometime) and even though I generally have little to no interest in revolutionary fiction, I can't wait.
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