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Cambridge
A prim and increasingly apprehensive Englishwoman observing the peculiarities—and barely veiled brutality—of a sugar plantation in the nineteenth-century West Indies. A devout black slave whose profoundly Christian sense of justice is about to cost him his life. In Cambridge, one of England's most highly acclaimed young novelists tells their stories with an uncanny authenticity of voice and juxtaposes them to devastating effect. As a suspenseful and inescapably damning portrait of the schizophrenia of slavery, Caryl Phillips's book belongs to the company of Beloved and The Confessions of Nat Turner.
228 pages, Paperback
First published February 4, 1991
27 people are currently reading
495 people want to read
About the author
Caryl Phillips
51 books214 followers Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds, and studied English Literature at Oxford University.
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
August 6, 2020
Beautifully sustained. No mere summary can do this story justice. It must be read! Set in 19th century in a British West Indies colony. The narrator is a British woman of middle years who travels to the islands as a kind of naive ethnographer of the plantation, which her father owns. By doing so she’s forestalling her marriage to an appallingly geezer back in Merry England. It’s a tricky proposition: to create this white British woman of her era and thrust her into a setting in which the keeping of slaves produces few qualms. She rejects the island culture which lacks the social securities of life back home. She can’t abide the estate man Mr. Brown and his obeah woman-cum-concubine who insists on sitting at the narrator’s table uninvited. She possesses sympathy but it only goes so far. For example, she doesn’t question the source of the luxurious meals she eats. Everything depends on a small army of slaves, yet she doesn’t look into the brute logistics of it all. She’s in a strange half-denial. Eventually she comes to see the necessity of slavery in the West Indies—for as long as it can survive in the face of American competition. Slaves are necessary due to the severity of the climate, which white men and draught animals can’t endure. She thinks of herself as enlightened but she’s really only half an intellect. She has ambitions of becoming a pro-slavery lecturer based on her New World experiences, which consist of little more than sitting around her father’s sugar estate. She is a portrait of complacency. When Mr. Brown is away the obeah woman comes crawling in the dirt outside the narrator’s bedroom, no doubt casting some spell. And wait until you meet Cambridge, the highly articulate freeman who like Solomon Northup was stolen into slavery. That’s the set up. The author has a truly formidable skill for misdirection. This book goes on the same shelf holding two other fine novels on slavery: Charles R. Johnson’s excellent Middle Passage and Barry Unsworth’s Booker-award winning Sacred Hunger.
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September 8, 2025Reviewing months or even weeks after reading a book has a mildly distorting effect. The mind latches on to those firework elements, their brightness seared into our memory although the accompanying smoke has blown away. Strangely, with this one, there was very little that remained. A burial at sea. A bloody murder. Looking at it again, I do recall that the voices were convincingly rendered. The story was a moving one. Only I felt the main narrator was a clumsy device, her coming as a stranger to this unspecified West Indian sugar plantation just after the abolition of the slave trade was a little too obvious a vehicle for some basic history lessons, and her coming at all was hardly credible. A nearly 30 year old single female, sent by her father from England to inspect the source of his wealth? What was he thinking?
May 14, 2016
Emily is a thirty year old spinster sent to the Caribbean to see the state of her father's plantation. After a treacherous sea voyage on which her maid dies, Emily arrives to find that her father's plantation manager has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and in his place is the new plantation manager, Arnold Brown. Brown slowly seduces Emily, who incurs the wrath of Brown's former slave mistress. She soon begins to fear that Brown's former mistress is insane, and her life may be in danger.
Meanwhile, Brown's mistress' husband, a slave named Cambridge, is also distressed. He knows that Brown is using his wife (whose mental state is delicate), yet he is powerless to stop him. Cambridge's anger at Brown grows when he learns that Brown is a brutal overseer who may have had a hand in murdering his predecessor. When an attempt to confront Brown turns tragic, Cambridge stands unjustly accused of Brown's murder.
April 13, 2023
The first dialogue in this book happens on page 177 out of 184.
May 7, 2016
Some of the other reviewers seem to be confused by aspects of this book. First of all: it is set at the time between the banning of the slave *trade*, and the *emancipation* of all slaves, ie. a time when cargoes were no longer lawfully coming out of Africa, but it was still lawful to own existing slaves in plantations. Secondly: Emily Cartwright is not travelling alone, she has her companion Isabella, who dies on the journey out.
Those are not the mysteries of the story. The real mysteries are the ones that exist in the gaps between sections of each version of the narrative, for example the moment where Emily begins to refer to "Mr Brown" as "Arnold". In one of these gaps there occurs the moment that causes the events recorded in the final section, and it's an open question for the reader where that occurs and who is responsible. That will also affect how you interpret other aspects of the different accounts, and the varying honesty of the testimonies.
I remember reading reviews of this book when it was published. At that time relativism and uncertainty were all the rage amongst the reviewers, there was a vogue for novels like "Mr Wroe's Virgins" and "Poor Things" that play with, and maybe commit to the idea that there is no truth above conflicting narratives of events. Perhaps "Cambridge" belongs in that strand, I can't be sure.
Those are not the mysteries of the story. The real mysteries are the ones that exist in the gaps between sections of each version of the narrative, for example the moment where Emily begins to refer to "Mr Brown" as "Arnold". In one of these gaps there occurs the moment that causes the events recorded in the final section, and it's an open question for the reader where that occurs and who is responsible. That will also affect how you interpret other aspects of the different accounts, and the varying honesty of the testimonies.
I remember reading reviews of this book when it was published. At that time relativism and uncertainty were all the rage amongst the reviewers, there was a vogue for novels like "Mr Wroe's Virgins" and "Poor Things" that play with, and maybe commit to the idea that there is no truth above conflicting narratives of events. Perhaps "Cambridge" belongs in that strand, I can't be sure.
March 21, 2010
This book wasn't entirely easy to get through, so thank God it was short. The writing was undoubtedly good and I enjoyed learning about an era/world that I was not previously familiar with. But, Phillips seemed to do little to keep the reader interested and invested.
January 31, 2020
You don't get the narrative you want, but you get the narrative you need. This is not a book that will follow the formulas and conventions you are accustomed to. I will say I disagree with the review on the cover, I don't feel this is a fast-paced novel, rather it is slow and thoughtful, meditative and frustrating.
Caryl Phillips doesn't give you a white-washed, self-congratulatory version of history. He makes you look at the parts you want to forget, the vile, ugly ones you want to gloss over in favor of the brighter (if they can be considered such) points. We want forget the philosophical and scientific racism that the racist whites used to justify their treatment of African slaves. We want forget the social death imposed on blacks when they were ripped from their families and land of origin. We want to forget the way that they were denied any future by their white masters.
When we (whites) think of ourselves as having "done the right thing" by ending chattel slavery, it's too easy to think we've done "enough." It's important to know and understand the undergirding ideas that supported slavery because so many of them are still present today. We don't see them because, like the diarist in part 1 of the novel, we are blinded by our privilege and our social power. Phillips makes us look at it, rubs our faces in it, and we can't look away. He doesn't give us redemption. He doesn't give us a white savior.
This novel is so relevant today. It was avant garde for its time (early 90s). But now in 2020 we can see the effects of not looking deeply at our past and being too quick to pat ourselves on the back. So much of the same oppression continues. It is baked into our economics and our politics and our communities and our relationships.
So is this a fun read? no. But it's a necessary one.
And in case the novel feels made up or too extreme for some sensibilities, all of it was taken (sometimes word for word) from travel journals from that time period.
Caryl Phillips doesn't give you a white-washed, self-congratulatory version of history. He makes you look at the parts you want to forget, the vile, ugly ones you want to gloss over in favor of the brighter (if they can be considered such) points. We want forget the philosophical and scientific racism that the racist whites used to justify their treatment of African slaves. We want forget the social death imposed on blacks when they were ripped from their families and land of origin. We want to forget the way that they were denied any future by their white masters.
When we (whites) think of ourselves as having "done the right thing" by ending chattel slavery, it's too easy to think we've done "enough." It's important to know and understand the undergirding ideas that supported slavery because so many of them are still present today. We don't see them because, like the diarist in part 1 of the novel, we are blinded by our privilege and our social power. Phillips makes us look at it, rubs our faces in it, and we can't look away. He doesn't give us redemption. He doesn't give us a white savior.
This novel is so relevant today. It was avant garde for its time (early 90s). But now in 2020 we can see the effects of not looking deeply at our past and being too quick to pat ourselves on the back. So much of the same oppression continues. It is baked into our economics and our politics and our communities and our relationships.
So is this a fun read? no. But it's a necessary one.
And in case the novel feels made up or too extreme for some sensibilities, all of it was taken (sometimes word for word) from travel journals from that time period.
April 24, 2021
I found this a really difficult book to read as a white person. The bulk of the narrative is told from the first person point of view of Emily Cartwright, the daughter of a British owner, who travels to her father's sugar plantation in the West Indies, her servant dying on the arduous voyage out, leaving her alone in an alien environment. Once there, she meets Arnold Brown, who has somehow taken over the role of governing the plantation from the previous overseer, and, initially at least, she finds him somewhat brutal and uncouth. She is further unnerved by a native witchy-doctor type figure who has an ambiguous place in the household, potentially as Brown's mistress, and who transpires to be the woman of the eponymous Cambridge, a former slave, who was freed, educated and had a previous life in England. Emily eventually falls prey to Brown, becomes pregnant and gives birth to a dead child. Brown is murdered and Cambridge convicted of the killing. Emily's narrative is skewed as to events (she isn't a reliable narrator) and it is impossible to read her story without contemporary attitudes interposing. Although she is, to some extent, a highly independent and well educated woman for the times, her linguistic and emotional presentation of the slaves and former slaves is shocking to our eyes, and challenges white perspectives. I was left uncertain what to make of the much shorter Cambridge narrative; was he similarly unreliable? Ultimately he felt less 'knowable' than Emily - perhaps the effect intended by the author. An unsettling read but makes me keen to tackle more by this author.
February 8, 2021
This is a book that was a true Goodreads discovery for me, the author having been brought to my attention by the enthusiastic reviews of user William2. While I do not quite share his level of appreciation, Cambridge is an exceedingly interesting novel. It follows, journal style, a young woman visiting her father's plantation around the time of the abolition of slavery. She had supported this movement, but what becomes almost immediately clear upon her arrival in [Jamaica, was it? Alas I forget now, writing a week after completion as I am] is that she utterly disdains black people and their culture. She acknowledges that they are people, but that is the absolute limit of her sympathy. Thus, she not only does nothing to ameliorate their condition on the plantation, but through her condescension and verbal abuse actively contributes to their further degradation.
Since she shows zero growth - that is the whole point after all - the novel becomes a bit tedious to read in some later passages. But there is a payoff: the entire narrative all serves to set up one long, final chapter told from the perspective of another character which I can only describe as a triumph. Also, unremarked upon in the reviews here, the narration of the voyage across the Atlantic is incredibly vivid and a clear highlight. A recommended book, provided your reading preferences tend towards the literary.
3.5/5
*Thanks also to William2 for his personal suggestion to start an exploration of the works of Caryl Phillips with this, his first novel.
Since she shows zero growth - that is the whole point after all - the novel becomes a bit tedious to read in some later passages. But there is a payoff: the entire narrative all serves to set up one long, final chapter told from the perspective of another character which I can only describe as a triumph. Also, unremarked upon in the reviews here, the narration of the voyage across the Atlantic is incredibly vivid and a clear highlight. A recommended book, provided your reading preferences tend towards the literary.
3.5/5
*Thanks also to William2 for his personal suggestion to start an exploration of the works of Caryl Phillips with this, his first novel.
March 9, 2023
Tells the story of a middle-class, white woman who goes to visit Daddy’s slave plantation. Interesting narrative structure, as we get to hear her perspective, the perspective of Cambridge - a slave educated in England - and then official reports, all based on the murder of Mr Brown, who is the plantation manager.
It was written well and intriguing, though I wouldn’t say I was particularly invested nor deeply drawn in.
Also, I must have underlined about 10 typos! Who edited my copy…?
It was written well and intriguing, though I wouldn’t say I was particularly invested nor deeply drawn in.
Also, I must have underlined about 10 typos! Who edited my copy…?
October 5, 2020
I read this for my First Year Seminar. I thought there were many interesting parts of the book and so many layers to the story that could be uncovered. At times the writing was painful, not because it was bad, but because of the voice of the narrator, which is very racist. At times the writing was also beautiful. The ending was tragic.
January 5, 2013
I wanted to like this book but I couldn't, I think because I couldn't shake the thought that the author was more interested in making a point than telling a story. It seemed almost that he tried too hard to put the reader into the time and place and the minds of the characters.
July 14, 2019
A written exercise combining postcolonial theory with the supposed voice of a Victorian young white woman. I would applaud the result in a 17-year-old student.
For a grown-up writer, it's just embarrassing.
For a grown-up writer, it's just embarrassing.
February 19, 2008
I think this is the best of Caryl Phillips' novels, a brilliant story of the ambivalences and contradictions and hypocrisies in a slave-owning colonial society.
May 28, 2022
A painful and gut wrenching read that shows the true treachery of racist white people.
July 4, 2023
hard to read but also powerful. a bit confusing though
August 16, 2025
"How maddening are the senses, how deafening is the heart as life creeps upon her determined course with scant regard for the injuries that are daily afflicted upon mankind" (127).
I read this underrated masterpiece of colonial terror and brutality when I was enrolled in a Caribbean fiction course in college.
This is one of the first novels that really swept me off my feat with its haunting, biting language that is brutal, as it is clinical. It also was one of the first books I read about the repercussions of colonialism and postcolonialism that would permeate its dirty deed onto black lives and bodies.
Caryl Phillips has fashioned a novel with two points of view: First there is Emily, a prim and proper Englishwoman who has been sent to (what I assume is St. Kitts) by her father to tend to his plantation there. There she records in her mind the lives of the black inhabitants: both enslaved, some free- and what she witnesses traumatizes her, but she does not know how to make sense of it.
She knows that what she sees is beyond awful- but she also struggles with her privilege as a white woman, who clings to her superiority as way to survive the brutality.
Emily has an affair with Arnold, a white overseer and becomes pregnant with his baby. Also being an "older" woman of 30 with a lack of relationships and of sex, she too is also traumatized by the experience and feelings of desire.
Then there is Cambridge, an intelligent slave who can recite Biblical verses and loves his mate Anna. He is eventually and wrongfully executed for the death of one of the main characters in this novel. His point of view is one of looking to God for salvation as things get worse, clinging to the hope that he will eventually be with his maker.
His awareness of the Bible and of reading makes him a target of criticism and of scorn by the white plantation workers. Yet, he is traumatized that his faith does not seem to save him. Cambridge and Emily both mirror the pangs of assimilating themselves into a fraught community. It's also set right on the eve of when Britain is about to abolish slavery for historical context.
Lush, and evocative and filled with suspense and dread- Professor Phillips does not allow you to get too close to either Cambridge or Emily.
He writes their points of view in a flat, eerie tone that seems to be on autopilot, which makes it terrifying because we know that they know they are both affected by unspeakable horror- yet, they don't know how to process it themselves. It's a metaphor for countries affected from colonialism, of how the trauma never ends, it just festers.
I remember when I became a teacher, I took a workshop on language and rhetoric. My presenter used a passage from "Cambridge" as an example of showing students how to look for tone and mood within sentence structures.
This is a perfect book that uses lucid, clinical prose to mask the horrors of slavery, and when you stop admiring its beauty, it reveals the truly ugly and repellant side of humankind's willingness to give into racism and superiority.
I read this underrated masterpiece of colonial terror and brutality when I was enrolled in a Caribbean fiction course in college.
This is one of the first novels that really swept me off my feat with its haunting, biting language that is brutal, as it is clinical. It also was one of the first books I read about the repercussions of colonialism and postcolonialism that would permeate its dirty deed onto black lives and bodies.
Caryl Phillips has fashioned a novel with two points of view: First there is Emily, a prim and proper Englishwoman who has been sent to (what I assume is St. Kitts) by her father to tend to his plantation there. There she records in her mind the lives of the black inhabitants: both enslaved, some free- and what she witnesses traumatizes her, but she does not know how to make sense of it.
She knows that what she sees is beyond awful- but she also struggles with her privilege as a white woman, who clings to her superiority as way to survive the brutality.
Emily has an affair with Arnold, a white overseer and becomes pregnant with his baby. Also being an "older" woman of 30 with a lack of relationships and of sex, she too is also traumatized by the experience and feelings of desire.
Then there is Cambridge, an intelligent slave who can recite Biblical verses and loves his mate Anna. He is eventually and wrongfully executed for the death of one of the main characters in this novel. His point of view is one of looking to God for salvation as things get worse, clinging to the hope that he will eventually be with his maker.
His awareness of the Bible and of reading makes him a target of criticism and of scorn by the white plantation workers. Yet, he is traumatized that his faith does not seem to save him. Cambridge and Emily both mirror the pangs of assimilating themselves into a fraught community. It's also set right on the eve of when Britain is about to abolish slavery for historical context.
Lush, and evocative and filled with suspense and dread- Professor Phillips does not allow you to get too close to either Cambridge or Emily.
He writes their points of view in a flat, eerie tone that seems to be on autopilot, which makes it terrifying because we know that they know they are both affected by unspeakable horror- yet, they don't know how to process it themselves. It's a metaphor for countries affected from colonialism, of how the trauma never ends, it just festers.
I remember when I became a teacher, I took a workshop on language and rhetoric. My presenter used a passage from "Cambridge" as an example of showing students how to look for tone and mood within sentence structures.
This is a perfect book that uses lucid, clinical prose to mask the horrors of slavery, and when you stop admiring its beauty, it reveals the truly ugly and repellant side of humankind's willingness to give into racism and superiority.
July 6, 2020
I was assigned this book in college and recently realized that I never finished it, so I went back and re-read it. It's a complicated little book. The vast majority of it is told in the first person from the perspective of the spinster daughter of an increasingly indebted British landowner. She is sent to inspect his sugar plantation in the British West Indies and the majority of the novel is written in the form of her diary, recording her experiences and her evolving and complex views on the slavery-dependent plantation she finds herself the mistress of. I found it a little odd that Phillips, a black man, chose to write a novel from the perspective of a white woman, but he is a masterful mimic of a Jane Austen-style heroine in the early 1800s. Unfortunately, he falls into the same habit Austen has of using pages and pages and pages to describe minute and dull social observations, and then rushing way too fast through the major plot points.
The most memorable part of the book for me was the ~30 pages that were written in the first person by the aged slave Cambridge. He essentially writes out his life story, which is fascinating and could have (maybe should have?) been a novel unto itself. His conversion to Christianity is a key plot point in his life story, but it also makes this section a little preachy and overwrought. But overall, his story was more engaging to me than most of the rest of the book.
That said, Phillips paints a vivid and painful portrait of life on a sugar plantation in the early 1800s, and ultimately by the end of the book, I would argue that his feminist message comes across just as clearly if not more clearly than his racial message.
The most memorable part of the book for me was the ~30 pages that were written in the first person by the aged slave Cambridge. He essentially writes out his life story, which is fascinating and could have (maybe should have?) been a novel unto itself. His conversion to Christianity is a key plot point in his life story, but it also makes this section a little preachy and overwrought. But overall, his story was more engaging to me than most of the rest of the book.
That said, Phillips paints a vivid and painful portrait of life on a sugar plantation in the early 1800s, and ultimately by the end of the book, I would argue that his feminist message comes across just as clearly if not more clearly than his racial message.
April 26, 2020
*3.5
This book is a truly poignant and important narrative of the injustices and horrors of the slave trade, with the use of the dual perspectives of Emily and Cambridge providing a searing juxtaposition and therefore weaving a subtle and effective commentary on this historical moment. Phillips excels in description; the richness and detail of his descriptive voice instantly transports the reader to the setting of the Carribean, as filtered as the landscape is however through Emily’s point of view. Although written convincingly in the style of a historical journal through Phillips use of language, the novel is still very readable and flowing.
However, there are some exceptions to this flowing style. The narrative of Cambridge is placed into the novel with no explanation of how it’s arrived there, in a book that was previously framed as Emily’s journal entries. The feverish quality of the final section leaves some confusion and an unsatisfying, open ending that leaves you frustratingly feeling like you’re missing something. Overall, though, I would definitely recommend this book to someone interested in historical or postcolonial literature.
This book is a truly poignant and important narrative of the injustices and horrors of the slave trade, with the use of the dual perspectives of Emily and Cambridge providing a searing juxtaposition and therefore weaving a subtle and effective commentary on this historical moment. Phillips excels in description; the richness and detail of his descriptive voice instantly transports the reader to the setting of the Carribean, as filtered as the landscape is however through Emily’s point of view. Although written convincingly in the style of a historical journal through Phillips use of language, the novel is still very readable and flowing.
However, there are some exceptions to this flowing style. The narrative of Cambridge is placed into the novel with no explanation of how it’s arrived there, in a book that was previously framed as Emily’s journal entries. The feverish quality of the final section leaves some confusion and an unsatisfying, open ending that leaves you frustratingly feeling like you’re missing something. Overall, though, I would definitely recommend this book to someone interested in historical or postcolonial literature.
March 31, 2018
At first I felt that Emily's account, though beautifully and cleverly written, was not giving me any new insights or information. However that very beauty and cleverness of writing - the well-researched 19th C voice gives insight into a character and perspective on events that provoke reflection and understanding.
That first long section moves slowly and then events and writing speed up to show the complexity of human interactions and stories and the impossibility of seeing facts clearly without a particular perspective.
Cambridge refuses to be head driver because he says he doesn't want to be in charge of anyone and then a few sentences later is explaining how a man's wife should be owned by him. This comment on the diversity of oppression is pointed out quite subtly and is typical of how the book works.
Sea voyages and the comparisons between them are used carefully to show distances between places and parts of society and to mark how those differences impact on understanding and action.
That first long section moves slowly and then events and writing speed up to show the complexity of human interactions and stories and the impossibility of seeing facts clearly without a particular perspective.
Cambridge refuses to be head driver because he says he doesn't want to be in charge of anyone and then a few sentences later is explaining how a man's wife should be owned by him. This comment on the diversity of oppression is pointed out quite subtly and is typical of how the book works.
Sea voyages and the comparisons between them are used carefully to show distances between places and parts of society and to mark how those differences impact on understanding and action.
December 18, 2021
I was really enjoying the first section of this book, an account of slavery in the West Indies in Victorian times, told from the perspective of a rich woman of the time. Her attempts to make sense of slavery were really interesting.
Something seems to go wrong as the book progresses though, once Christiana runs away everything seems to become rushed and confused. The story just seems to stop with little reason.
The Cambridge section of the book felt really brief and lacking in emotion, a really simple recounting of the sad facts of his life.
I don’t really understand why this book is called Cambridge, the character seems to be a relatively minor part overall. While I probably will remember the struggles of Emily to work out her position on slavery, I’m sure I’ll probably forget the story of a man tricked into slavery.
A really strong start to a novel, but a weak ending.
Something seems to go wrong as the book progresses though, once Christiana runs away everything seems to become rushed and confused. The story just seems to stop with little reason.
The Cambridge section of the book felt really brief and lacking in emotion, a really simple recounting of the sad facts of his life.
I don’t really understand why this book is called Cambridge, the character seems to be a relatively minor part overall. While I probably will remember the struggles of Emily to work out her position on slavery, I’m sure I’ll probably forget the story of a man tricked into slavery.
A really strong start to a novel, but a weak ending.
December 18, 2021
This piece of historical fiction is hard to rate because it's so disturbingly good. I wish I had read this when it was first published. Being knowledgeable now of the broader context of this piece of literary fiction I felt myself making connections to other works whether fiction or non-fiction. For its year of publication (1991), I feel that this novel broke some ground. Far from spoiling anything for potential readers, I say that if you want a unique text, competing perspectives on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Slavery, and Abolition read this book. Phillips dealt with other themes as well, but I'll leave off here. One tidbit about the language: Phillips' use of multiple voices is impressive. This is a book I can assign in a World History class. I highly recommend this work. I own another novel by Phillips that I can't wait to read.
December 28, 2020
A haunting story. Told gently, initially by Emily.Its account revealing lots of complexities. It also looks at murder. Emily drip feeds the reader into seeing snapshots of Cambridge. We are then given a full blown account of his personality and history. I think this is a crucial continuation of Emily’s account.
On my reread I realisedCambridges account is that of someone gone crazy by the injustices he has experienced and it is only when I grasped this that I got the full sense of his character. Clearly what he describes would be unlikely to have happened so he escaped his chains by a form of insanity just like Christiana though her madness is in our faces.
A very thoughtful and intriguing novel. Loved it
On my reread I realisedCambridges account is that of someone gone crazy by the injustices he has experienced and it is only when I grasped this that I got the full sense of his character. Clearly what he describes would be unlikely to have happened so he escaped his chains by a form of insanity just like Christiana though her madness is in our faces.
A very thoughtful and intriguing novel. Loved it
October 21, 2025
the ending and the emotional climax of the book were both quite confusing for me. but that is intentional. did cambridge, finally tired of the years of abuse, kill mr. brown? or was it self-defense?
overall i liked the book quite a bit despite it being assigned for class. my professor brought up an interesting point regarding how conflicted emily is. she's quite romantic and enjoys being chased after by the slave-owning men. is she REALLY into abolitionism or is she just trying to rebel against her slaveowner dad?
i didn't mind a majority of the book being from emily's perspective. cambridge's pov is so depressing and sad (understandably so) :(
overall i liked the book quite a bit despite it being assigned for class. my professor brought up an interesting point regarding how conflicted emily is. she's quite romantic and enjoys being chased after by the slave-owning men. is she REALLY into abolitionism or is she just trying to rebel against her slaveowner dad?
i didn't mind a majority of the book being from emily's perspective. cambridge's pov is so depressing and sad (understandably so) :(
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 2, 2019
In general not a horrendous book. It is a good story, a good commentary on the various horrors of slavery, a good work of art and creativity. But in my estimation it simply lacked in entertainment. Part 1 especially is dreadfully boring, and in the course of reading it I fell asleep multiple times. The prose is rather dry, lacking to my taste in humor, depth, and pace. If you make it through the excruciating length of part 1 (still awake), the shorter and more interesting perspectives in parts 2 and 3 are almost worth it.
May 4, 2021
What an amazing book.
In the first 3/4 the protagonist is an Englishwoman travelling to her father's West Indian plantation in the 1800's. Her casual racism made me very uncomfortable, but I assumed the book was written in a time when opinions like these were more palatable then today. Imagine my confusion when discovered its written by a black man in 1992! Curiosity made me grit my teeth and keep reading, and in the last 1/4 I had my reward. The point of view changes, and the story is flipped up side down. The open ending is beautifully tragic.
In the first 3/4 the protagonist is an Englishwoman travelling to her father's West Indian plantation in the 1800's. Her casual racism made me very uncomfortable, but I assumed the book was written in a time when opinions like these were more palatable then today. Imagine my confusion when discovered its written by a black man in 1992! Curiosity made me grit my teeth and keep reading, and in the last 1/4 I had my reward. The point of view changes, and the story is flipped up side down. The open ending is beautifully tragic.
November 10, 2022
This portrait of a naive Englishwoman in the West Indies and the tragedies of those enslaved on her father's estate, as well as the decayed and decaying moral positions of the enslavers' management staff and other colonial types, is sufficiently distressing that, although short, I sometimes had to force myself to keep reading. The combination of cluelessness and opportunistic greed, and their results for all concerned, are distressing. Shelve this one with Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (though without the connection to Jane Eyre).
November 24, 2020
While I appreciated the realistic portrayal of Caribbean plantation slavery and the hardship of living on an island before modern amenities, I expected a story about Cambridge. When we finally get to him, Cambridge's story is compelling, but it's too late in the book for me. One has to get through Emily, whose florid description of people of color at every whisper overuses words like sooty or ivory, which grates after time. Emily's arc is confusing as it descends - the island consuming all.
June 21, 2020
Careful and complicated writing, beautiful in a classic British letters manner. The setting and story is quite painful, I wish the characters were more accessible and less stereotyped. But really nice prose if you like this sort of formal and excessive writing (which I do)
April 7, 2018
Subtle and subversive, with a narrative structure unlike anything else I have read
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