The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's perspective. This book was immediately intriguing to me, and for good reason. James was immaculately true to its source material while still standing on its own as a story. For much of Huck Finn, Jim and Huck are separated, so this novel fills in many of the blanks of what Jim was doing while Huck was off inserting himself in feuds and having his other adventures.. It also darkens much of the original plot; Huck Finn told through the eyes of an adult.

However, the events of Huckleberry Finn are really a secondary plot to Jim's life as a runaway who is trying to reunite with his wife and child. This was such heart-wrenching and brutal examination of slavery and how deeply it impacted every aspect of a person's life, physically and mentally. The scene where Jim first code-switches hit me like a train. It was so incredibly obvious afterwards, but I think it was really in that moment that I realized the full scope of what this book was going to do. Fantastic.

I thoroughly enjoyed James by Percival Everett. I was drawn to this book after hearing Anne Bogel highly recommend it on her podcast. It lived up to the hype, and I savored every moment of it. James offers a unique perspective, retelling the story of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of Jim, who prefers to be called James. The character of James was truly captivating, and I particularly admired his dynamic relationship with Huckleberry Finn. While many of us are acquainted with their journey down the Mississippi, this retelling serves as a compelling testament to the themes of family, morality, and revenge.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of James.

Percival Everett’s James is one of my most anticipated new releases of this year, and let me assure you—it did not disappoint! This creative, compelling novel reimagines Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved Black man who escapes captivity and winds up as Huck’s sidekick on his Mississippi River adventures. If that sounds gimmicky, trust me—in Everett’s capable hands, it’s anything but. In James we revisit plot points from Twain’s familiar story, including some of the episodic tribulations of the novel, but we are also shown aspects of the antebellum South that are much bleaker and bloodier than in the original.
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Perhaps most importantly, what makes James great is Everett’s nuanced, utterly innovative, multi-dimensional depiction of Jim. Indeed, this book is not so much a retelling as a complete re-envisioning of Twain’s work, including its themes and assumptions. In the original book, published in the 1880s, Jim was a sympathetic Black man—radical at the time—but also an object of humor (for his superstitions and his malapropisms) and an object for Huck’s moral development. In James, Everett subverts those framings. Here, Jim is self-educated, having learned to read using copies of Voltaire and John Locke from his enslaver’s library, and he also speaks “proper English,” but hides both from White folks, including Huck. This clever inversion transforms the Black vernacular Twain used in his original novel—one of its most well-known and controversial elements—from a racist assumption into a tactic of survival. (Jim’s code-switching is just one of several ways that Everett plays with language in this book, another feature that I loved.) Everett’s Jim also becomes, over the course of the novel, a shrewd and calculating radical, and a reluctant but unstoppable hero. The novel’s final scenes were shocking and brilliant.
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In short, this book will stick with me for a long time. It’s absolutely an early contender for my favorite book of 2024.

I'm not one to say that all classics should be thrown out, nor am I one to say that there is always merit in inverting a literary tradition - but Percival Everett can and should do all of these, and if Huck Finn's curricular stronghold dies to make room for James? I am a happy teacher.
Lucid, luscious prose, and an unmatched wit - this book demands to be read.

My first Percival Everett book. I saw American Fiction this year and didn’t know (great film!) was also based on an Everett book. I really loved this story told from the perspective of the enslaved character Jim from Huck Finn. Truly something we needed in the literary canon. A beautiful powerful response to one of the classic books in American literature, making it a classic in its own right. Very excited to see how this wonderful novel is received upon publication. Recommending it to everyone I know! Purchasing copies for our library collection.

James is the retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of "Jim." The novel remains faithful to Twain's overall story arc but turns it all on its head in order to retell events from the perspective of Jim, a slave who runs away to avoid being sold away from his family. Jim and Huckleberry (who has faked his own death to escape an abusive father) meet up and embark on a series of adventures which highlight the racism of the times. In the Twain version, Huck is center stage and Jim is at times missing from the narrative as Huck gets embroiled in a series of difficult circumstances. Everett's James is no children's novel. It expands on, and gives voice to a character whose primary role in the classic novel is to provide a means to redeem the morality of white protagonist.

I tend to appreciate retelling of classic novels that provide voice for characters in the margins, but retellings can be exquisitely difficult to pull off and often deconstruct these classics in ineffective ways. This was not the case with this retelling. It's no wonder that it's brilliantly executed given Everett's talent and penchant for the use of humor and satire to highlight the brutality and inhumanity of American slavery. The Jim in Everett's novel is no passive sidekick. He is the main character with agency, intelligence, and strengths. He doesn't exist to redeem Huck.

Everett writes with humor, but with the sort of humor that makes you uncomfortable because it highlights the oppression and brutality of American slavery. There are debates between James and deceased philosophers, a plethora of vaudeville-types of scenes and characters, and a unique blend of the tragic and absurd. It's not just a retelling of a classic but an entirely new book that uses the structure of the classic but adds depth and additional adventures that take place where Jim was absent in the original.

I think the book is brilliant and I think Percival Everett is brilliant. James will undoubtedly become a classic and will probably make a few literary award lists. I do think that it's worth reading the original first (I had read it in high school - a long time ago) and reading them in close proximity enhances the experience and appreciation for exactly what the author has achieved.

Thank you for the e-Arc of this book. First of all I am going into this book blind, having not read Huckleberry Finn since my childhood. The popularity of this book is high and for good reason. This book is not a retelling of Huck Finn but a reimagined story of the runaway slave and Hucks story colliding. The result is fantastic. I loved the characters . The language is enchanting and makes for a quick and satisfying read. These characters will remain with you long after the page is closed. This is a book I will definitely be re-reading in the near future just so I can talk about it more with friends. The ending was powerful and made me want to do a church happy dance.

In a truly unique reimagining of the classic tale by Mark Twain, this story relates some of the same events and characters of the original, but through the voice of Jim (or James as he later refers to himself). Unlike the original portrayal of the slave, James is insightful and intelligent, his inner thoughts about the books he's read and his philosophical ruminations sometimes beyond my own understanding. Yet he still takes on a mask in front of the white people, adopting the barely intelligible "slave dialect" they've come to expect. The float down the river with Huck as seen through Jim's eyes is more a journey of terror of being caught than an adventure. This thought provoking portrayal is sure to become an instant classic of its own.
Thanks to Doubleday Books through Netgalley for the advance copy of this book. The opinions in this review are my own and given voluntarily.

In this reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Percival Everett introduces James. His story is so compelling as seen from his view as a slave, and yet humorous with a sharp, intelligent wit. His journey up and down the Mississippi is an absolute must read!

James is a Pulitzer-worthy feat and one of the best novels I have ever read. This is not hyperbole. Vacillating between subversive wit and gut-wrenching realism, James is a propulsive, harrowing read that refuses to comfort readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday for the ARC! All opinions are my own.

You know that feeling you get in your gut when you know a story is going to be good? By only chapter three of Percival Everett’s “James”, I just knew it was going to be five stars.

This raw, heartbreaking re-imagining of Huckleberry Finn brings insight and depth to Twain’s character of Jim. James is a clever, compassionate character you’ll fall in love with immediately. His charm, wit, and inner monologues will have you rooting for him endlessly.

With both incredibly tender moments and shocking twists, this is a fast paced adventure on the Mississippi River you will not want to miss out on.

I think I underlined and annotated almost half the book, but I’ll choose just one quote to share with you:

“How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one's equal must argue for one's equality, that one's equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.”

If you are required to read Huckleberry Finn in school, I’m proposing James to be added to the curriculum, as well.

James is a darkly comic expansion of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Everett has taken well-known characters (Huck Finn) and less-developed (Jim), making them richer, more complex, and human. James as a protagonist is intelligent, compassionate, skilled, and determined. Much like in the original text, Huck & Jim spend the novel "adventuring" along the Mississippi River. Unlike in the original text, though, the narrative has an undercurrent of terror. It's a terror specific to Jim's status as a runaway slave in antebellum America. At every turn, there's a possibility that Jim could be captured, beaten, or hung by the white owning class that lurks in every town or hamlet along the river. This element of fear adds a more realistic approach to the so-called adventures for the era in which it's set.

Regardless of your familiarity with Mark Twain's original story and characters, James is a very enjoyable and well-paced historical novel injected with Everett's signature wit.

I was so taken with James this week, the earlier sentences were not enough. This book is a total wow. I like a lot of books, but rarely do I feel that a new book is unequivocally great. This is one of those books. Anyone who doesn’t like this novel needs to write me a full PhD level dissertation as to why, because I don’t believe it is possible to not think this book is next level greatness. I will fight folks over this one.

I had a lot to do this weekend and when I couldn’t be reading James it was front and center in my mind. I was thinking, talking, or texting about it. I sent a few voice memos, and even called an author friend to scream into the phone over how much I loved the book. Masterpiece is the exact right designation. The Atlantic needs to rewrite the list and add James. It is that book, and if it doesn’t win the Pulitzer and the Booker and the National Book Award and any other book award, we riot!

Thanks to NetGalley and DoubleDay for this eARC!

I remember discovering Percival Everett's writing through LeVar Burton's "LeVar Burton Reads" podcast years ago. I love Everett's writing, and I was ecstatic to be receiving an eARC of this book. It's a stunning retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I think this should be considered mandatory reading in schools. I highly recommend this book!

James is a brilliant retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved Jim / James’s point of view. It retains harrowing plot points down the Mississippi, but by shifting the lens from a young white boy to an enslaved Black man, the story takes on a different shape. And the stakes are much higher. For a novel that carries so much heft, Everett does his wonderfully Everett thing and is able to deftly add moments of humor while using this story from America’s past to comment on America today. Thank you to Doubleday and to NetGalley for the advanced review copy.

Retelling, in part, of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from enslaved man Jim’s point of view. So much to impact here, from the horrors of slavery to the unlikely friendship of the two, to the entirely different world of the enslaved that is generally perceived. Well written and skillfully moves from amusing to tragic. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

A stunning re-imagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim the slave.

Jim lives in two worlds. In one, among other slaves, he is an intelligent, well-read, and articulate family man. In the other, he talks “slave” and behaves in ways that white people think dumb slaves should behave. He despises all white people for their complicity, either overt or covert, with slavery, with the exception of two local boys, Tom Sawyer and, especially, Huck Finn.

When he finds out that he is to be sold away from his family, he escapes and takes refuge on an island in the Mississippi, where he meets up with Huck, who has faked his own death and run away from his abusive father. As the two head down the river on a makeshift raft, they have a series of encounters, some re-worked from Twain’s book and some that are Jim’s alone. However, rather than being written as a series of adventures, these are played out from Jim’s perspective and are chillingly terrifying in their portrayal of the precariousness and powerlessness of a slave.

There is nothing entertaining about lynching, rape, whippings, and beatings but the author make no bones about including them in this 19th century setting. He doesn’t flinch from the appalling acts of violence that are committed for the slightest of reasons but presents them in a matter-of-fact, justified way. There are a couple of episodes which have a sliver of lightness, but are quickly sucked into darkness. In one, Jim is bought from his new owner by the (real-life) Daniel Decatur Emmett and his Virginia Minstrels to fill in for their tenor; he has to look like a white man who is blacked up to look like a black man. Though Emmett claims he doesn’t believe in slavery, his subsequent actions show that Jim is right to be dismissive and afraid.

All of Jim’s journey is spent on the run, driven by the need to free his wife and daughter. His protectiveness towards Huck sometimes leads him to make selfless choices, and the reason for this becomes clear later in the book. Along the road, Jim meets other slaves; some are helpful and some, Jim learns, seem to like being owned. Every single white person he meets is a threat to not only his freedom but also to his life.

By the end of the novel, Jim has emerged from the proverbial hottest fire as the strongest steel and symbolically re-names himself James. A whisper of hope for slaves appears with the trickling arrival of the Union army.

This is a short and absorbing read that packs a major emotional punch. I’m not particularly familiar with Huckleberry Finn, bar the Wikipedia recap, but I think the author has taken an American classic and re-worked it to tell a startlingly different, devastating, and authentic story. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Doubleday and Netgalley for the digital review copy..

This is a masterclass in writing, and a masterpiece of fiction, James is so, so brilliant and Percival Everett is a gift. I was incredibly moved by this retelling of Huck Finn, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I expect a Pulitzer for this one—it is nothing short of fantastic. Bravo. I cannot wait to sell this, and talk about it, and hear all the praise coming to Everett.

Though has a legendary status in the Great American Literary Canon, for many, including myself, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was a very uncomfortable adventure, often abandoned midway because of the vernacular and the machine gun like repetition of the n-word. So, I had some trepidation, even with an author of Everett’s reputation, with the idea of embarking on this adventure again, though from the perspective of Jim. How wrong I was to have any reservations! This is a magnificent novel that manages to both preserve the excitement, pacing, cadence, poignancy, voice, and much of the plot of Twain’s original creation, while simultaneously extending the reach and complexity of the narrative, through the eyes of Jim. Jim is highly literate, clandestinely teaching himself to read and adept at linguistic code switching with other slaves when around white people.

And Jim evolves into James, running away before he is to be sold, escaping down the Mississippi River with Huck and in the process becoming the boy’s protector, and ushering Huck into his own awakening of the injustice of slavery and the equality of black people. In dreams, James dialogues with (Voltaire, Locke, Cunegonde, and others) of the nature of race and prejudice, which often takes the form of intellectual sparring full of logical constructs, which he dazzlingly dismantles. But in a powerhouse of a book, the greatest power is perhaps James’ matter of fact narration detailing the precariousness and viciousness of everyday existence of slaves; the slaves use the term, “hell” to describe their surroundings, rife with whippings, rape, lynching, daily humiliations, and families ripped apart as their owners see them as commodities to be trafficked. This is not new literacy ground but achieves a special heartache and horror within the scaffolding of this book. Nature: the weather, and especially the river, is as palpable a character as anyone in the story and the plot twists and turns itself like a formidable and unpredictable body of water. Just as in any masterful book, the greatest regret is that the story ends. So highly recommended.

A reimagining of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, Percival Everett’s newest book James is compulsively readable. Jim, or should I say James, runs away when he hears is about to be sold. Huck Finn also runs away, and they travel along the Mississippi together. While there are a few characters and occurrences that readers will remember from the original novel, such as the appearance of the King and the Duke, much of the plot revolves around what happens to James while he is separated from Huck. In James’ telling, as one can imagine, the plot is much more violent and traumatic than what is seen through Huck’s viewpoint. Readers of the original will find that they do not actually know anything at all about this well-known classic character (and there is a pretty major surprise in store about Huck Finn as well).

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered by many to be one of the Great American Novels, and James may be joining this list as well. It is a standalone knockout that would appeal to readers of the classic as well as contemporary readers who are uninterested in the original. I have not read Twain’s novel in quite some time, but I can’t wait to go back to it and read it with this fully realized version of Jim in mind.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for the electronic advanced review copy of this novel. James certainly lives up to its hype!