Aren’t there times you wish you could give a book more than 5 stars? Rating Mudbound was certainly one of those times. It is a novel that delves into the truly horrific realities of racism and racial discrimination in the southern United States around the end of World War 2. And, to be honest, it just made me angry. Ronsel Jackson goes off to fight for his king and country (I know that’s English and not applicable here but I honestly don’t know the Americanism), doing so despite the fact that his ‘king’ and his country does not give a single shit about him; he fights, he loves, he lives; and then he comes back to the same segregated hell hole and is treated in a way that I do not even want to speak about. Although, even if I wanted to, I probably would not be able to, on account of the nausea.
Which, as someone who is from the United Kingdom and was therefore subjected to its ridiculous Anglocentric education system, I will admit right now that I did not realise the sheer amount of racial hatred was so bad in the 1940s in the States… I am not saying it was any better in Europe, but Jesus Christ. I had to stop and remind myself, near-constantly throughout the entirety of the reading experience that, no, this book is not set in the 1800s or in another period where slavery was illegal.
This was 1945. 1945!
Relatively modern by the opinions of the history books.
Although utterly archaic and barbaric in terms of the limits of human behaviour.
Throughout Mudbound, Hillary Jordan manages to capture the utter gaping darkness of the period, cut through only by the sparse appearances of light from human love and kindness. And, I have not watched the film yet but, with the cast being what it is, I am certain that the tale (no matter what its form) will stay with me forever.

I am currently buying books for the library at school and I greatly enjoyed this title. I like to buy a good spread of books from YA to non-fiction so that the young people read as diverse a group of books as possible. I feel like this book would be a challenging, interesting and unusual pick, that would certainly give the young people at my school a great deal to talk about at our next Book Speed Dating events. I will certainly be recommending it to our school librarian and can't wait to hear what the kids think of it too!

Such a sad story but enjoyed the writing tremendously, great characterisation. Would recommend to my friends.

I enjoyed the first third to half of this book before it started falling apart for me: Jordan has an easy-reading style that draws us in but there are far too many 1st person narrators (six) who don't have distinct voices. More importantly, this feels inauthentic - not in Jordan's undoubted loathing of the hideous racism enshrined here, but because the events of the story are things she - and many of us -have already read about in other books. The story is predictable from the outset and we know it will end badly.

The second half gets increasingly fevered throwing in all the tropes and cliches of Southern Gothic: incest, desire, the KKK, murder.

Overall, a well-meaning book but the portrayal of racism is unsubtle and unanalytical: the crazy racists are one-dimensional monsters of hatred; the victimised black family folksy and endearing - the lines too starkly drawn, too (haha!) black and white.

Set just after the end of World War Two in 1946, this is a harsh Southern novel that encapsulates the Jim Crow era. It is set in the Mississippi Delta on a cotton farm, where life is hard and the work is backbreaking, and the brown colour dominates the mudbound landscape. With a mother fearful that her daughter would be left on the shelf, Laura marries Henry McAllan, a World War 1 veteran. Soon after, he moves them to the farm. City bred Laura finds her new surroundings a shock, both demanding and challenging. And then there is Henry's father, Pappy, a horrifying individual, full of bigotry and hate, who terrifies Laura and her children. This is a story of two families, the McAllans and the black Jacksons, bound uncomfortably together through their sharecropping agreements. The narrative is delivered from the perspectives of the two family members as events move to the inevitable beats of their conclusions and the part each of them plays in the tragedy.

Two decorated soldiers return, the sensitive younger brother of Henry, Jamie, a pilot, and a different man. in comparison to Henry, and Laura is drawn to him. Ronsel Jackson served in the black tank divisions in Europe, and experienced what equality feels like there, only to return to the deeply entrenched racial divisions of home, where he and other black folk are seen as less than human. The two men form a friendship based on their common nightmarish war experiences for which they both turn to alcohol. However, the townsfolk are stirred to anger at the sight of a friendship that crosses their rigid demarcation of racial lines. This is a story of a marriage, a women's roles, family dynamics, injustice, race and brutality. In effect, this is a raw and heartbreaking history of the US in a period of social change. Jordan develops her characters beautifully, giving us access to what they think and feel to catch a turbulent and divisive era. A brilliant read that I highly recommend. Many thanks to Random House Cornerstone for an ARC.