What do you think?
Rate this book
Crossing The River
From the acclaimed author of Cambridge comes an ambitious, formally inventive, and intensely moving evocation of the scattered offspring of Africa. It begins in a year of failing crops and desperate foolishness, which forces a father to sell his three children into slavery. Employing a brilliant range of voices and narrative techniques, Caryl Phillips folows these exiles across the river that separates continents and centuries.
Phillips's characters include a freed slave who journeys to Liberia as a missionary in the 1830s; a pioneer woman seeking refuge from the white man's justice on the Colorado frontier; and an African-American G.I. who falls in love with a white Englishwoman during World War II. Together these voices make up a "many-tongued chorus" of common memory—and one of the most stunning works of fiction ever to address the lives of black people severed from their homeland.
Phillips's characters include a freed slave who journeys to Liberia as a missionary in the 1830s; a pioneer woman seeking refuge from the white man's justice on the Colorado frontier; and an African-American G.I. who falls in love with a white Englishwoman during World War II. Together these voices make up a "many-tongued chorus" of common memory—and one of the most stunning works of fiction ever to address the lives of black people severed from their homeland.
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 18, 1993
28 people are currently reading
1485 people want to read
About the author
Caryl Phillips
51 books215 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)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
November 28, 2020
Fascinating. “A Novel” is not printed on the jacket here. These are really connected stories, but they’re not labeled “short stories” either. The book represents a hybrid form. Non-linear. Jumping around in time.
The third part, comprising the captain’s log of a slave ship, reminds me in its tone of blasè complacency of the testimony of SS guards who worked in the Nazi death camps. See Primo Levi et al. As a kind of kicker, or perhaps coup de grâs, the author intersperses the log with letters to the young captain’s wife back in England. The effect, one of the normalization of terror, is harrowing.
Caryl Phillips’s books are often, as here, about aspects of the African diaspora; about persons of African descent caught in the historical cataclysm of slavery, freedom and post-colonial drift. My favorites include Cambridge, A Distant Shore, Dancing in the Dark, and The Nature of Blood, all of which are fiction, and The Atlantic Sound, which is nonfiction.
The third part, comprising the captain’s log of a slave ship, reminds me in its tone of blasè complacency of the testimony of SS guards who worked in the Nazi death camps. See Primo Levi et al. As a kind of kicker, or perhaps coup de grâs, the author intersperses the log with letters to the young captain’s wife back in England. The effect, one of the normalization of terror, is harrowing.
Caryl Phillips’s books are often, as here, about aspects of the African diaspora; about persons of African descent caught in the historical cataclysm of slavery, freedom and post-colonial drift. My favorites include Cambridge, A Distant Shore, Dancing in the Dark, and The Nature of Blood, all of which are fiction, and The Atlantic Sound, which is nonfiction.
August 6, 2024
A disappointing bookclub read that promises much but falls short in delivery. The writing is at times clunky, at others magical, and despite some excellent ideas this feels more like a work-in-progress. Of course, this can be viewed as both a strength and a weakness - there’s certainly room for the reader to move but also a frustrating inability to fully comprehend and appreciate the author’s purpose.
December 13, 2016
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0848cvnDescription: SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND is a story of love and race set in Yorkshire during the Second World War.
When the US Army arrived in Britain during World War Two, it came in still-segregated units. When a platoon of black GIs sets up camp near a quiet Yorkshire village, there are far-reaching consequences both for rebellious GI Travis Johnson and local shopkeeper, Joyce.
May 3, 2017
Caryl Phillips can slip you into the head and heart of characters as diverse as the African diaspora, and make you care desperately. These wrenching, beautiful tales are tied by the horror of slavery but travel hundreds of years beyond the official end of that particular plague.
You believe you’re being lead somewhere, and perhaps you are...Extensive entries from the log of a slave ship’s “master” include a variety of things - letters to his beloved wife, the weather, trouble with his crew - & many entries, once the ship reaches Sierra Leone - mostly quite cursory - of the ‘slaves’ bought, as though Africa were an entire continent of people lined up with bar codes on their foreheads, just waiting to be, scanned, put in irons and chains, and shipped, head to toe in their own vomit and filth across the Atlantic. To hell.
On and on with the “one small girl 4 strong men”, “two young women”...
til you begin to blur - as awful as that is - and then suddenly you are jolted back with a sentence that you remember - and you realize that you know a human being sold right now into slavery and the savagery rips you from your previous semi-state and you can't breath right.
After that, when the log registers “Before midnight buried 3 more women slaves (Nos 71, 104, 109). Know not what they died of, for they have not been properly alive since they first came on board…”
Why haven't you been angry? What's wrong with you (me)? You are ready to sling that “master” up by his….wait. Am i angry enough now? Am I paying attention now? A 15 year old honor roll student shot dead by Dallas TX police yesterday, as he sat in the backseat of a car. Doing nothing. "one young man"? Looked 'properly alive' to me.
The power of good writing to tell the truth.
You believe you’re being lead somewhere, and perhaps you are...Extensive entries from the log of a slave ship’s “master” include a variety of things - letters to his beloved wife, the weather, trouble with his crew - & many entries, once the ship reaches Sierra Leone - mostly quite cursory - of the ‘slaves’ bought, as though Africa were an entire continent of people lined up with bar codes on their foreheads, just waiting to be, scanned, put in irons and chains, and shipped, head to toe in their own vomit and filth across the Atlantic. To hell.
On and on with the “one small girl 4 strong men”, “two young women”...
til you begin to blur - as awful as that is - and then suddenly you are jolted back with a sentence that you remember - and you realize that you know a human being sold right now into slavery and the savagery rips you from your previous semi-state and you can't breath right.
After that, when the log registers “Before midnight buried 3 more women slaves (Nos 71, 104, 109). Know not what they died of, for they have not been properly alive since they first came on board…”
Why haven't you been angry? What's wrong with you (me)? You are ready to sling that “master” up by his….wait. Am i angry enough now? Am I paying attention now? A 15 year old honor roll student shot dead by Dallas TX police yesterday, as he sat in the backseat of a car. Doing nothing. "one young man"? Looked 'properly alive' to me.
The power of good writing to tell the truth.
July 19, 2024
A Travessia do Rio - finalista do Prémio Booker em 1993 – é um romance do autor Caryl Phillips, nascido em São Cristóvão e Neves, mas que ainda em criança se mudou para Inglaterra.
O livro é composto por quatro histórias diferentes e não relacionadas: a de um evangelista negro na Libéria, a de uma mulher negra a caminho de uma nova vida na Califórnia durante a migração do século XIX, a do capitão de um navio negreiro e a de um soldado afro-americano na Inglaterra durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. As diferentes histórias são apresentadas através de uma variedade de formas literárias, incluindo cartas, diários e narração na terceira pessoa.
É um livro que fala da diáspora africana, da identidade, da perda e do sofrimento ao longo de um período de mais de 250 anos.
Uma tolice desesperada. A colheita fracassou. Vendi meus filhos.
(…)
Um negócio vergonhoso. Podia sentir os olhos deles sobre mim, me perguntando Por quê?. Eu me virei e fiz a viagem de volta pelos mesmos longos caminhos. Acredito que com isso se encerrem os negócios a que se propõe esta viagem. E, logo depois, o coro de uma memória comum começou a me assombrar.
Há 250 anos ouço esse coral de muitas vozes. E, ocasionalmente, entre aquele monte de vozes incansáveis, escuto as dos meus filhos. Meu Nash. Minha Martha. Meu Travis. Suas vidas partidas. Deitando raízes de esperança num solo difícil. Há 250 anos tento falar com eles: Crianças, eu sou o pai de vocês. Amo vocês. Mas entendam. Não existem caminhos definidos a se trilhar na água. Não existem sinalizações. Não há retorno. Para um país pisoteado pelas botas imundas dos outros. Para um povo incentivado a entrar em guerra contra si mesmo. Para um pai consumido pelo remorso. Vocês estão além disso. Partidos, como os galhos de uma árvore; mas não perdidos, pois seus corpos carregam as sementes de novas árvores. Deitando raízes de esperança num solo difícil. E eu, que rejeitei vocês, só posso me culpar por meu desespero. Há 250 anos, espero pacientemente que o vento se levante na margem mais distante do rio. Para ouvir o rufo dos tambores do outro lado das águas. Para o som do coral crescer em volume. Só então, se eu ouvir com atenção, é que posso reencontrar meus filhos perdidos. Um momento rápido e de dolorosa comunhão. Uma tolice desesperada. A colheita fracassou. Vendi meus filhos.
É um romance poderoso que explora as cicatrizes duradouras da escravatura e do racismo.
80/198 – São Cristóvão e Neves
O livro é composto por quatro histórias diferentes e não relacionadas: a de um evangelista negro na Libéria, a de uma mulher negra a caminho de uma nova vida na Califórnia durante a migração do século XIX, a do capitão de um navio negreiro e a de um soldado afro-americano na Inglaterra durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. As diferentes histórias são apresentadas através de uma variedade de formas literárias, incluindo cartas, diários e narração na terceira pessoa.
É um livro que fala da diáspora africana, da identidade, da perda e do sofrimento ao longo de um período de mais de 250 anos.
Uma tolice desesperada. A colheita fracassou. Vendi meus filhos.
(…)
Um negócio vergonhoso. Podia sentir os olhos deles sobre mim, me perguntando Por quê?. Eu me virei e fiz a viagem de volta pelos mesmos longos caminhos. Acredito que com isso se encerrem os negócios a que se propõe esta viagem. E, logo depois, o coro de uma memória comum começou a me assombrar.
Há 250 anos ouço esse coral de muitas vozes. E, ocasionalmente, entre aquele monte de vozes incansáveis, escuto as dos meus filhos. Meu Nash. Minha Martha. Meu Travis. Suas vidas partidas. Deitando raízes de esperança num solo difícil. Há 250 anos tento falar com eles: Crianças, eu sou o pai de vocês. Amo vocês. Mas entendam. Não existem caminhos definidos a se trilhar na água. Não existem sinalizações. Não há retorno. Para um país pisoteado pelas botas imundas dos outros. Para um povo incentivado a entrar em guerra contra si mesmo. Para um pai consumido pelo remorso. Vocês estão além disso. Partidos, como os galhos de uma árvore; mas não perdidos, pois seus corpos carregam as sementes de novas árvores. Deitando raízes de esperança num solo difícil. E eu, que rejeitei vocês, só posso me culpar por meu desespero. Há 250 anos, espero pacientemente que o vento se levante na margem mais distante do rio. Para ouvir o rufo dos tambores do outro lado das águas. Para o som do coral crescer em volume. Só então, se eu ouvir com atenção, é que posso reencontrar meus filhos perdidos. Um momento rápido e de dolorosa comunhão. Uma tolice desesperada. A colheita fracassou. Vendi meus filhos.
É um romance poderoso que explora as cicatrizes duradouras da escravatura e do racismo.
80/198 – São Cristóvão e Neves
February 23, 2009
Crossing the River is divided into three sections, each focused on a different effect of the slave trade. I found it interesting that even though the novel is about slavery, and was written by a black British author, the three main voices were of white people. One is a slave master who frees his slaves and pays their way back to Liberia in the 1820s; the next is a captain of an 18th century slaving ship; and the last is a young shopkeep in Liverpool (?) who falls in love with an African American soldier during the Blitz.
The stories cannot rightly be said to intertwine, but neither are they totally disparate. Each protagonist finds him or herself bound to the horrors and hatred of slavery and racism, albeit to very different effect.
I really liked Phillips' use of non-traditional formats. The first two sections of the novel are comprised of a mix of narrative, letters, and the ship captain's log, which encourages a more active reading style. The third section is cut up into very small sections with dated headers, but the dates are not at all linear. If I were still a grad student, I would probably write about the breakdown of historical narrative, etc, etc, but you can infer that for yourselves.
This was a nice complement to the last book I read, Toni Morrison's A Mercy.
The stories cannot rightly be said to intertwine, but neither are they totally disparate. Each protagonist finds him or herself bound to the horrors and hatred of slavery and racism, albeit to very different effect.
I really liked Phillips' use of non-traditional formats. The first two sections of the novel are comprised of a mix of narrative, letters, and the ship captain's log, which encourages a more active reading style. The third section is cut up into very small sections with dated headers, but the dates are not at all linear. If I were still a grad student, I would probably write about the breakdown of historical narrative, etc, etc, but you can infer that for yourselves.
This was a nice complement to the last book I read, Toni Morrison's A Mercy.
October 24, 2008
What a powerful novel! I’d never even heard of this one till it was picked for an online bookgroup I belong to. I couldn't put it down. Really a well conceived and imagined novel.
The novel begins with a father explaining how the crops failed and in desperation he sold his three children—Nash, Martha, and Travis—to a slave trader. The four sections that make up the center of the novel focus on each of the children as well as one a young ship’s captain on his first trip to bring slaves from Africa to America—the one who picks up the “2 strong man-boys and a proud girl” from their father. The focus of each section and its language is completely different and appropriate to the content. There is tragedy but also triumph in each life. Nash is conceived as an educated American Negro whose master sent him back to Africa in the 1820s—to the new nation of Liberia—to educate his people and to teach them Christianity. We read his letters to the master, increasingly despairing because he doesn’t hear back (his master’s wife has intercepted and destroyed the letters). Martha is a slave, sold away from her husband and daughter when the master of a Virginia plantation dies, who goes first to pre-Civil War Kansas which is not a slave state and then, when her owner intends selling her across the river (into Missouri which is a slave state) she runs away and joins a wagon train of free blacks going to California, but dies on the way, in Colorado. Travis is an American GI in WWII, stationed in England who carries on a delicate courtship with an Englishwoman, fathers a child, comes back to marry her, and then is killed on the beach in Italy. Nash’s and Martha’s voices are appropriate to their time and place; their thoughts are on freedom and on love. Travis is seen through the eyes of June who loves him though she’s never really known love before. There’s also a section focused on the captain of the American slave ship—consisting of excerpts from a ship’s log and letters to his wife.
Phillips doesn't handle each section the same way, nor are the voices exclusively those of the African disapora. Captain Hamilton's view point is important because he's not a hardened slave trader, though possibly his father, who captained the ship before him, was. But making the last section from Joyce's point of view was brilliant. Had he made it from Travis's, we might have gone over territory that had already been covered, but that of the woman who loved him brought something new.
I loved how Phillips tied it up at the end, in the voice of the distraught father who sold his children, quoting from each of the voices and relating their stories to black soldiers in Vietnam who "had no quarrel with the VietCong”, to Toussaint L'Overature, to those struggling with Papa Doc and other dictators, to Jazz and dance and James Baldwin (who in Paris wrote Nobody Knows My Name) and Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.
The novel begins with a father explaining how the crops failed and in desperation he sold his three children—Nash, Martha, and Travis—to a slave trader. The four sections that make up the center of the novel focus on each of the children as well as one a young ship’s captain on his first trip to bring slaves from Africa to America—the one who picks up the “2 strong man-boys and a proud girl” from their father. The focus of each section and its language is completely different and appropriate to the content. There is tragedy but also triumph in each life. Nash is conceived as an educated American Negro whose master sent him back to Africa in the 1820s—to the new nation of Liberia—to educate his people and to teach them Christianity. We read his letters to the master, increasingly despairing because he doesn’t hear back (his master’s wife has intercepted and destroyed the letters). Martha is a slave, sold away from her husband and daughter when the master of a Virginia plantation dies, who goes first to pre-Civil War Kansas which is not a slave state and then, when her owner intends selling her across the river (into Missouri which is a slave state) she runs away and joins a wagon train of free blacks going to California, but dies on the way, in Colorado. Travis is an American GI in WWII, stationed in England who carries on a delicate courtship with an Englishwoman, fathers a child, comes back to marry her, and then is killed on the beach in Italy. Nash’s and Martha’s voices are appropriate to their time and place; their thoughts are on freedom and on love. Travis is seen through the eyes of June who loves him though she’s never really known love before. There’s also a section focused on the captain of the American slave ship—consisting of excerpts from a ship’s log and letters to his wife.
Phillips doesn't handle each section the same way, nor are the voices exclusively those of the African disapora. Captain Hamilton's view point is important because he's not a hardened slave trader, though possibly his father, who captained the ship before him, was. But making the last section from Joyce's point of view was brilliant. Had he made it from Travis's, we might have gone over territory that had already been covered, but that of the woman who loved him brought something new.
I loved how Phillips tied it up at the end, in the voice of the distraught father who sold his children, quoting from each of the voices and relating their stories to black soldiers in Vietnam who "had no quarrel with the VietCong”, to Toussaint L'Overature, to those struggling with Papa Doc and other dictators, to Jazz and dance and James Baldwin (who in Paris wrote Nobody Knows My Name) and Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.
June 13, 2022
“For two hundred and fifty years I have waited patiently for the wind to rise. On the far bank of the river. For the chorus to swell. For the drum to pound across the water. Only then, if I listen closely, can I rediscover my lost children. A brief, painful communion. A desperate foolishness. The crops failed. I sold my children.”
Crossing the River opens with a beautiful and heartbreaking few pages from a father who, in desperation, is selling his children. From there, the novel moves essentially into connected short stories that explore the diaspora from different points of view and different moments in time - from the 1700’s told in the journal entries and letters of the captain of a slave trading ship, the 1800’s from the perspective of a freed enslaved man who has gone to Liberia and his former owner, a Black woman in the 1800’s who is traveling with Black pioneers in an attempt to get to California, and an African-American soldier in WWII told from the perspective of a British woman he meets while stationed in England. Each of these sections explores a different perspective - and they are each so stylistically different that I didn’t connect with each at the same level. The story about Martha, the pioneer woman, was the strongest for me - the writing was so vivid that you felt like you were there with her and Phillips created such a strong emotional reaction, almost visceral, to her experience. While some sections felt more removed, at the end of the book, you could appreciate that these were choices of style and that the style reinforced what Phillips was doing in painting a panoramic picture of the experiences of the diaspora. At our book group discussion, someone said that this might be one of those books where the total experience of the book is better than the individual parts and that feels like an apt description. While each of the parts is well done, when I looked at the book as a whole, what Phillips accomplished in the way he wrote this and in how he chose to tell the story is masterful. And then the ending - bringing it back to the father, 250 years later, still waiting, thinking about all the experiences of those in the diaspora - and speaking of the love for his children and all those that crossed the river.
Crossing the River opens with a beautiful and heartbreaking few pages from a father who, in desperation, is selling his children. From there, the novel moves essentially into connected short stories that explore the diaspora from different points of view and different moments in time - from the 1700’s told in the journal entries and letters of the captain of a slave trading ship, the 1800’s from the perspective of a freed enslaved man who has gone to Liberia and his former owner, a Black woman in the 1800’s who is traveling with Black pioneers in an attempt to get to California, and an African-American soldier in WWII told from the perspective of a British woman he meets while stationed in England. Each of these sections explores a different perspective - and they are each so stylistically different that I didn’t connect with each at the same level. The story about Martha, the pioneer woman, was the strongest for me - the writing was so vivid that you felt like you were there with her and Phillips created such a strong emotional reaction, almost visceral, to her experience. While some sections felt more removed, at the end of the book, you could appreciate that these were choices of style and that the style reinforced what Phillips was doing in painting a panoramic picture of the experiences of the diaspora. At our book group discussion, someone said that this might be one of those books where the total experience of the book is better than the individual parts and that feels like an apt description. While each of the parts is well done, when I looked at the book as a whole, what Phillips accomplished in the way he wrote this and in how he chose to tell the story is masterful. And then the ending - bringing it back to the father, 250 years later, still waiting, thinking about all the experiences of those in the diaspora - and speaking of the love for his children and all those that crossed the river.
July 8, 2025
4.5 stars. A very engaging, well written book consisting of four stories covering two hundred and eleven years, from 1752 to 1963. It is about three black people during different time periods and in different countries, struggling with parting from their native Africa.
In ‘The Pagan Coast’ Nash, a freed slave, returns to Africa as a Christian missionary in the 1830s with the aim of converting and civilizing the African people.
‘West” is about Martha, a woman who escapes slavery and travels to the American West, encounters hardships as she seeks refuge.
‘Crossing the River” is the diary record s of a ship, the “Duke of York”, leaving Liverpool on 24 August 1752 to travel to the Windward Coast of African to collect black slaves. The entry stops on 21 May 1753 with the ship finally leaving the sight of Africa with many slaves on board.
In ‘Somewhere in England’, Travis, an African-American GI stationed in England during World War II, falls in love with a married white British woman.
Quotes from the book that I like:
‘Their hearts began to swell with the pity that one feels for a fellow being who has lost both his way and his sense of purpose’.
‘I recognize the place, I feel at home here, but I don’t belong. I am of, and not of, this place.”
Each story is written in a different style, showing slavery in progress and what transpires in the aftermath of slavery. . I enjoyed each of the stories. Highly recommended.
This book was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize.
In ‘The Pagan Coast’ Nash, a freed slave, returns to Africa as a Christian missionary in the 1830s with the aim of converting and civilizing the African people.
‘West” is about Martha, a woman who escapes slavery and travels to the American West, encounters hardships as she seeks refuge.
‘Crossing the River” is the diary record s of a ship, the “Duke of York”, leaving Liverpool on 24 August 1752 to travel to the Windward Coast of African to collect black slaves. The entry stops on 21 May 1753 with the ship finally leaving the sight of Africa with many slaves on board.
In ‘Somewhere in England’, Travis, an African-American GI stationed in England during World War II, falls in love with a married white British woman.
Quotes from the book that I like:
‘Their hearts began to swell with the pity that one feels for a fellow being who has lost both his way and his sense of purpose’.
‘I recognize the place, I feel at home here, but I don’t belong. I am of, and not of, this place.”
Each story is written in a different style, showing slavery in progress and what transpires in the aftermath of slavery. . I enjoyed each of the stories. Highly recommended.
This book was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize.
May 7, 2022
“I’m just happier with books. They don’t shout at me, or accuse me of anything. They don’t even know that I’m not much to look at.”
December 19, 2008
Skillfully, savoring the agony, Caryl Phillips picks at the our itchiest patches of skin. Skin is his great subject: skin color & its discontents. Born in the West Indies, he's what an American would call "black," but he's also Oxford & all that, & both his novels & his non-fiction have spun his hybrid nature between magician's fingers. For non-fiction, try THE EUROPEAN TRIBE, & among his novels you'll find nothing so brilliant as CROSSING THE RIVER. Framed by a tragedy-in-brief, a few pages at beginning & end concerning a West-African subsistence farmer forced by circumstances to sell his children into slavery, RIVER then pieces together four novellas of the slave trade & its far-reaching consequences. Settings range in time from the mid-18th Century to the mid-20th, the details chilling & exquisite no matter the period, & the points of view are, well, "diverse" would be an understatement. Only one perspective is that of a "colored person," as the protagonist herself would say. This is the old woman abandoned in pioneer Denver, post-Emancipation. She's too sick for the journey cross-country to California, where her surviving daughter has made a life. Indeed, everyone here is seeking after lost family, though the relationship may be smeared w/ incest. Consider "The Pagan Coast," the stunning opener. Our vehicle of consciousness is a Virginia slave-owner, a man who readers of this era will come to understand is a "catamite" -- not that the character himself would ever admit to such a thing -- & his story concerns a broken-hearted & ultimately self-destructive odyssey over to the newly-founded Liberia, where he has allowed his former favorite house-boy (favorite, in every way) to repatriate. A subtle narrative, "Pagan Coast" eschews an obvious climax but delivers a wallop, & the title piece may convey a still stranger shock; it purports to be the captain's log from a slave-trader. The long closing novella limns the shadows cast into the 1940s, via the love affair with an African-American GI stationed in England, again from a remarkable point of view: that of the man's married white lover, the eventual mother of their mixed-race child, soon given up for adoption. Does their love come closer to equality? Does it hold out the possibility of reconciliation? For a book about the chasms pitched open by race -- a book of incomplete journeys represented in fragments -- this one proves nothing short of miraculous in how it gets over.
March 5, 2012
"An then listened as the many-tongued chorus of the common memory begins again to swell [...]". A beautifully written and structured account of intertwined generations of victims of colonization of slavery. The concept of diaspora playing a very important role, key for both fully understading the novel and concept itself. Multi-layered discourses are melted in all the different voices that are used, plus a possible metanarrative reading by an analysis of all the different modes that are used -journal, epistolar, summary... A must read if you want to make the most Postcolonial theory and its application to literature.
December 4, 2016
FRom BBC Radio 4 - Drama:
written and dramatised from his own novel, CROSSING THE RIVER, by Caryl Phillips.
SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND is a story of love and race set in Yorkshire during the Second World War.
When the US Army arrived in Britain during World War Two, it came in still-segregated units. When a platoon of black GIs sets up camp near a quiet Yorkshire village, there are far-reaching consequences both for rebellious GI Travis Johnson and local shopkeeper, Joyce.
All other parts played by members of the cast
Produced/directed by Gaynor Macfarlane.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0848cvn
written and dramatised from his own novel, CROSSING THE RIVER, by Caryl Phillips.
SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND is a story of love and race set in Yorkshire during the Second World War.
When the US Army arrived in Britain during World War Two, it came in still-segregated units. When a platoon of black GIs sets up camp near a quiet Yorkshire village, there are far-reaching consequences both for rebellious GI Travis Johnson and local shopkeeper, Joyce.
All other parts played by members of the cast
Produced/directed by Gaynor Macfarlane.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0848cvn
Read
July 16, 2014The concept of the book and its relation to the experimental form was compelling, but it just didn't hold together for me. The "crossing" portion was particularly strong by using absent voices to illustrate the cultural schizophrenia of the time (and of our current time as well). But I missed more threads pulling through the entire work -- though of course I can see how the lack of such threads could also be a comment on the diaspora as well.
Want to read
December 3, 20162 DEC 2016 - a recommendation through Bettie. Thank you.
October 10, 2022
I'm glad I read this for Black History Month UK. I regret that it took me so long to read this book. I've only known of Phillips for a few years. Having read Cambridge last year I knew that Phillips was a solid writer of historical fiction. Like Cambridge, this is a work of historical fiction. Unlike Cambridge, he writes in multiple voices set in different places such as Liberia, along the West African coast, the United States, and England during different periods of time from the 18th century to the mid-20th century, but not in chronological order. It's an ambitious undertaking. There are some real strengths to this work. There are points in which I labored to get through. Overall, Phillips writes a story of the survival of African peoples in the western hemisphere. It's a story of the African Diaspora. If I had read this book when it was published in 1993, I would appreciate this book more. But I have read about most of these themes in literary fiction published after. I'm unsure if Phillips was a trailblazer in presenting these themes together in one work. Regardless, this is an important piece of historical fiction worthy of a critical reading.
July 27, 2017
a couple choice quotations
"... That my father traded not wisely, and with too much vigour. He goes on and hints that Father cultivated a passionate hatred, instead of a commercial detachment, towards the poor creatures in his care" ... "For indeed my father held dear to the belief that the teachings of the Lord were incompatible with his chosen occupation, and that it was folly to try to toke together these opposites in one breast."
"Get the police, I've just done in my missus. The dirty bitch."
"... That my father traded not wisely, and with too much vigour. He goes on and hints that Father cultivated a passionate hatred, instead of a commercial detachment, towards the poor creatures in his care" ... "For indeed my father held dear to the belief that the teachings of the Lord were incompatible with his chosen occupation, and that it was folly to try to toke together these opposites in one breast."
"Get the police, I've just done in my missus. The dirty bitch."
November 15, 2021
Written allowing the reader to visualize the incredible journeys over 250 years, of the many characters in this The storytelling is captivating and takes you places, where some of these places are difficult to be in. It is a challenging story to follow if you don’t concentrate on the time and characters that move back and forth in it. At times I felt lost in the story but never in the struggles of his characters.
February 13, 2024
3.75
Beautifully written short stories, some I enjoyed more than others, but all had very important messages - unfortunately didn't enjoy the overall book as much as I would have liked to. Genuinely going to blame that on the really boring cover. So superficial of me, but I think because the cover bored me, I was bored before reading ... and then couldn't get past the feeling of boredom even when I was enjoying the stories??? Sometimes it's hard to not judge a book by its cover!
Beautifully written short stories, some I enjoyed more than others, but all had very important messages - unfortunately didn't enjoy the overall book as much as I would have liked to. Genuinely going to blame that on the really boring cover. So superficial of me, but I think because the cover bored me, I was bored before reading ... and then couldn't get past the feeling of boredom even when I was enjoying the stories??? Sometimes it's hard to not judge a book by its cover!
October 1, 2018
The combined review of the East Dulwich WI Bookclub as published at www.eastdulwichwi.co.uk.
Unfortunately our write up is somewhat brief this month – apologies! The overall feeling about the book was mixed. The book is essentially written in 4 distinct parts loosely tied together with the prologue and epilogue. We referred to these as the ‘Liberia’ section, the ‘Ship’s Logs’, the ‘Wagon Trail’ and the ‘England WWII’ section. Many of us found the ‘Ship’s Logs’ section especially tedious and many skim read this part. The ‘Liberia’ section brought some interesting historical information to some of our members but the way in which the story was told with large gaps of time and little explanation as to the change in heart of the main character was for some frustrating. The ‘Wagon Trail’ section was generally enjoyable but very brief. The ‘England WWII’ section was considered to be nicely written and an interesting story but considering that the book was billed to be about ‘the scattered offspring of Africa’, the narrative of the African-American GI was distinctly absent.
Some readers especially enjoyed the unique and differing way in which the stories were told – by letter correspondence, copies of a captain’s shipping logs and first and third person narrative. Others found the writing to be disparate and rather frustrating.
The subject matter was largely emotionally difficult to read and each story had its own set of moral and emotional issues to be processed as well as the wraparound story (the book starts with an african man selling his three children to a slave trader). It was pointed out that interestingly, most of the stories were told from the point of view of white people, be this the slave owner who supported the founding of Liberia and allowed his most educated slaves to travel there, the Captain of the slave ship or the Yorkshire lass who falls in love with the GI. The other main point discussed was the general confusion regarding the timeline of the stories. The first three being variously set in the 1800s and the last during the second world war but with the sold african children supposedly being the primary character in each of the stories despite the timing. Some members were content with the essence of the story defying the timeline but for others this caused significant confusion whilst reading the book.
The Verdict
The overall verdict was mixed. The subject matters were individually very interesting, with some members wishing to read up more on certain aspects such as the formation and settlement of Liberia but the writing style, structure of the book and plot remained divisive.
Overall Rating
6ish out of 10
Unfortunately our write up is somewhat brief this month – apologies! The overall feeling about the book was mixed. The book is essentially written in 4 distinct parts loosely tied together with the prologue and epilogue. We referred to these as the ‘Liberia’ section, the ‘Ship’s Logs’, the ‘Wagon Trail’ and the ‘England WWII’ section. Many of us found the ‘Ship’s Logs’ section especially tedious and many skim read this part. The ‘Liberia’ section brought some interesting historical information to some of our members but the way in which the story was told with large gaps of time and little explanation as to the change in heart of the main character was for some frustrating. The ‘Wagon Trail’ section was generally enjoyable but very brief. The ‘England WWII’ section was considered to be nicely written and an interesting story but considering that the book was billed to be about ‘the scattered offspring of Africa’, the narrative of the African-American GI was distinctly absent.
Some readers especially enjoyed the unique and differing way in which the stories were told – by letter correspondence, copies of a captain’s shipping logs and first and third person narrative. Others found the writing to be disparate and rather frustrating.
The subject matter was largely emotionally difficult to read and each story had its own set of moral and emotional issues to be processed as well as the wraparound story (the book starts with an african man selling his three children to a slave trader). It was pointed out that interestingly, most of the stories were told from the point of view of white people, be this the slave owner who supported the founding of Liberia and allowed his most educated slaves to travel there, the Captain of the slave ship or the Yorkshire lass who falls in love with the GI. The other main point discussed was the general confusion regarding the timeline of the stories. The first three being variously set in the 1800s and the last during the second world war but with the sold african children supposedly being the primary character in each of the stories despite the timing. Some members were content with the essence of the story defying the timeline but for others this caused significant confusion whilst reading the book.
The Verdict
The overall verdict was mixed. The subject matters were individually very interesting, with some members wishing to read up more on certain aspects such as the formation and settlement of Liberia but the writing style, structure of the book and plot remained divisive.
Overall Rating
6ish out of 10
September 9, 2024
This book broke my heart again. It interweaves lives and descendants in a gut wrenching way. Just read it.
p. 86
'(...) and she wondered if freedom was more important than love, and indeed if love was at all possible without somebody taking it from her.'
p. 52
Consistently good and disturbing and making you question things you though you sort of knew. Can't stop reading.
---
Voor het lezen
Ik kocht dit boek eind 1996 voor 23,90 gulden lol. Shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize maakte deze roman tijdens mijn studie enorme indruk als een meesterwerk dat pijnlijk zinnige dingen zegt over slavernij en de Afrikaanse diaspora. De roman omvat een periode van 250 jaar en volgt twee broers en een zus op hun reis door era's en over continenten. Een complex web van levens, en zoals ik het onthouden heb zoveel beter gedaan dan het recent gelezen 'Cloud Atlas' (dat ook iets probeert te zeggen over slavernij) en het voor mij qua schrijfstijl enorm underwhelmende 'Naar het Paradijs'.
Caryl Phillips brengt bovendien begin volgend jaar een nieuwe roman uit. Let's go...
p. 86
'(...) and she wondered if freedom was more important than love, and indeed if love was at all possible without somebody taking it from her.'
p. 52
Consistently good and disturbing and making you question things you though you sort of knew. Can't stop reading.
---
Voor het lezen
Ik kocht dit boek eind 1996 voor 23,90 gulden lol. Shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize maakte deze roman tijdens mijn studie enorme indruk als een meesterwerk dat pijnlijk zinnige dingen zegt over slavernij en de Afrikaanse diaspora. De roman omvat een periode van 250 jaar en volgt twee broers en een zus op hun reis door era's en over continenten. Een complex web van levens, en zoals ik het onthouden heb zoveel beter gedaan dan het recent gelezen 'Cloud Atlas' (dat ook iets probeert te zeggen over slavernij) en het voor mij qua schrijfstijl enorm underwhelmende 'Naar het Paradijs'.
Caryl Phillips brengt bovendien begin volgend jaar een nieuwe roman uit. Let's go...
June 1, 2022
Read for class. I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected myself to!! It’s not usually the type of book I gravitate towards but I appreciate that it was faced paced with different storylines I could follow along with. I also loved the circular narrative that connected the beginning to the end. Also, the voice of the “African Father” made for so much more thematic significance in the story I really liked
July 2, 2007
This book about lives of African Americans is told in four parts, each from a different point of view and at a different time in history. While the premise is a good one and I like the idea of each part being a different story from a different narrator, the book was hit-and-miss for me, and dragged too much to really be enjoyable.
July 31, 2011
This novel promises a lot but doesn't quite deliver: parts of the narrative are evocative and engrossing, but others leave the reader cold and disconnected. Nevertheless, it is essential reading to anyone interested in the complexities of the "black atlantic".
May 8, 2018
Bit all over the place and hard to follow at times, but not too bad.
March 10, 2021
"Survivors. In their diasporan souls a dream like steel".
I remain massively torn on my opinions regarding Caryl Phillips’ "Crossing the River". In terms of the stories, there is an overarching narrative that is both powerful and engaging. However, this narrative is diminished in some of the odd forms of storytelling and some really bizzare inclusions of eclectic discourse.
For the first half of the text, we're hearing the tales of Nash Williams and Martha Randolph: a pair of slaves who find themselves in different circumstances. Phillips' text shines brightest when it actively tells the story of these individuals. At first, the opening letters from Nash to his master Edward Williams are met with open arms, forming a dialogue and relationship before we encounter either of these characters. However, what begins as a breath of fresh air becomes quickly a test of patience. The chapter that the book is titled after is essentially a 50 page backlog of details that happened on James' Hamilton's ship. I understand that this was meant to demonstrate how slaves are bought and sold, drawing attention to the cynical coldness that is the business of human trafficking - but why have I just read a log that tells of swivels being installed on the ship to make it more intimidating? There seems to be very odd inclusion of details that have no affect on the background, characters or story. Details don't equate to good storytelling (looking specifically at you here George R.R. Martin).
Back to the narrative itself, the opening chapter on Nash is handled well enough. However, I would have liked to hear more of his expedition with the American Colonisation Society and what veered him away from Christianity. It did leave me feeling rather unfulfilled after a promising start. The second chapter deals with Martha Randolph in the aptly titled "West". An old woman who is attempting to seek freedom in California, Martha is left for dead due to her age and speed. It is short and there is once again little to characterise the individual. However, a lovely bit of irony is used in the conclusion of her passing as the white stranger who finds her decides the only way she can be buried as a Christian is if she has a name. Identified earlier in the chapter, Martha despised being assigned a new name under different owners, and she ultimately dies as she lived.
The final chapter "Somewhere in England" is brilliant and easily my favourite. Written in extracts, we only get to see glimpses of Joyce's life from 1939-1968 and it works perfectly. Furthermore, there is some real character development here, with Joyce's story perhaps being the saddest one in the book (despite her position as a white middle class wife). Her love triangle between Len (her husband who habitually dishes out violence) and Travis (the reincarnation (?) of James Hamilton's son, a black American soldier). There is a real sense of the injustice persistent in post-war Britain and I felt both the anguish and eventual happiness Joyce felt within this chapter.
The book ends with the ancestor narrator for the final time and there is a note of optimism despite the harsh ends the slave children met. I remain confused as to Travis sudden appearance in the 1940s (a fat century after his "brother" Nash's chapter), however, one explanation I read is that the ancestral narrator is "some sort of all-knowing ancestor who has "listened" to his "children" for the last "two hundred and fifty years" (taken from wikipedia lol). I'm a big fan of books that are smart enough to let their reader figure out the answers, but I believe this a bit of a fetch.
Overall, I remain conflicted on this text. At the halfway point, I was debating whether to give this text a 2/3 star review, but by the end it was definitely whether to give it a 3/4 star review. I decided to go for the 3 star simply as I cannot undermine how boring some of the sections here actually are. However, there remains a really beautiful tale of cross-generational black experiences. I really don't know if I can recommend this, but I certainly ended up enjoying it!
I remain massively torn on my opinions regarding Caryl Phillips’ "Crossing the River". In terms of the stories, there is an overarching narrative that is both powerful and engaging. However, this narrative is diminished in some of the odd forms of storytelling and some really bizzare inclusions of eclectic discourse.
For the first half of the text, we're hearing the tales of Nash Williams and Martha Randolph: a pair of slaves who find themselves in different circumstances. Phillips' text shines brightest when it actively tells the story of these individuals. At first, the opening letters from Nash to his master Edward Williams are met with open arms, forming a dialogue and relationship before we encounter either of these characters. However, what begins as a breath of fresh air becomes quickly a test of patience. The chapter that the book is titled after is essentially a 50 page backlog of details that happened on James' Hamilton's ship. I understand that this was meant to demonstrate how slaves are bought and sold, drawing attention to the cynical coldness that is the business of human trafficking - but why have I just read a log that tells of swivels being installed on the ship to make it more intimidating? There seems to be very odd inclusion of details that have no affect on the background, characters or story. Details don't equate to good storytelling (looking specifically at you here George R.R. Martin).
Back to the narrative itself, the opening chapter on Nash is handled well enough. However, I would have liked to hear more of his expedition with the American Colonisation Society and what veered him away from Christianity. It did leave me feeling rather unfulfilled after a promising start. The second chapter deals with Martha Randolph in the aptly titled "West". An old woman who is attempting to seek freedom in California, Martha is left for dead due to her age and speed. It is short and there is once again little to characterise the individual. However, a lovely bit of irony is used in the conclusion of her passing as the white stranger who finds her decides the only way she can be buried as a Christian is if she has a name. Identified earlier in the chapter, Martha despised being assigned a new name under different owners, and she ultimately dies as she lived.
The final chapter "Somewhere in England" is brilliant and easily my favourite. Written in extracts, we only get to see glimpses of Joyce's life from 1939-1968 and it works perfectly. Furthermore, there is some real character development here, with Joyce's story perhaps being the saddest one in the book (despite her position as a white middle class wife). Her love triangle between Len (her husband who habitually dishes out violence) and Travis (the reincarnation (?) of James Hamilton's son, a black American soldier). There is a real sense of the injustice persistent in post-war Britain and I felt both the anguish and eventual happiness Joyce felt within this chapter.
The book ends with the ancestor narrator for the final time and there is a note of optimism despite the harsh ends the slave children met. I remain confused as to Travis sudden appearance in the 1940s (a fat century after his "brother" Nash's chapter), however, one explanation I read is that the ancestral narrator is "some sort of all-knowing ancestor who has "listened" to his "children" for the last "two hundred and fifty years" (taken from wikipedia lol). I'm a big fan of books that are smart enough to let their reader figure out the answers, but I believe this a bit of a fetch.
Overall, I remain conflicted on this text. At the halfway point, I was debating whether to give this text a 2/3 star review, but by the end it was definitely whether to give it a 3/4 star review. I decided to go for the 3 star simply as I cannot undermine how boring some of the sections here actually are. However, there remains a really beautiful tale of cross-generational black experiences. I really don't know if I can recommend this, but I certainly ended up enjoying it!
May 3, 2020
The voices differ, in style, in class, across 250 years from west Africa to a Yorkshire village. They are biologically unrelated, yet spiritually united in expressing a dignity in the suffering and injustice of slavery.
The stories, not told in chronological order, are of a starving father selling his children, the log of the slaver, the educated slave Nash sent to convert natives in a remote settlement in Liberia, Martha a liberated but still unfree slave joining a waggon trail in the hope of finding the daughter sold by her master, and of coloured GIs in England.
Each episode has a distinctive character, the language varying accordingly, archaic, formal, fevered or colloquial. But in each of them there is restraint and honesty, and a refusal to go beyond the natural reticence of the time for the approval of a modern sensibility.
Nash constantly expresses thanks to his ‘master’ although the latter has apparently abandoned him after despatching him on his missionary venture. Phillips might easily have vilified this slave-owning liberal for a conscience-salving gesture, but in fact it turns out his good intentions have been frustrated by others.
Despite never losing his Christian belief, Nash gradually drifts into native ways, taking three wives and even finding some virtue in the local custom of attributing any sudden death to witchcraft and poisoning the accused spell-weaver.
A century earlier, slaver Captain James Hamilton dispassionately records the purchase and rejection of the goods for sale. In one chilling phrase, he logs the arrival of the ship’s longboat with slaves - ‘2 fine boys, and 3 old women whom I instructed them to dispose of.’
Yet this is a man who can in the next breath thank Divine Providence, while quietly admitting he does not approve of his trade. He believes like his late father that ‘the teachings of the Lord were incompatible with his chosen occupation, and that it was folly to try and yoke together these opposites in one breast.’
The final chapter tells the story of the unhappily-married Joyce, befriended by the courteous coloured American GI Travis, and labelled the village as ‘a traitor to my own kind.’ There is a beautiful and appropriate image as she tries to retain the hand of the young soldier, he uncertain of the propriety of their relationship. ‘I wanted to catch it like a slippery fish,” she says.
These are plausible, fallible, sympathetic figures, in what is a modest and surprisingly gentle novel which nevertheless devastatingly exposes one of humanity’s greatest crimes, and its consequences over more than two centuries.
The stories, not told in chronological order, are of a starving father selling his children, the log of the slaver, the educated slave Nash sent to convert natives in a remote settlement in Liberia, Martha a liberated but still unfree slave joining a waggon trail in the hope of finding the daughter sold by her master, and of coloured GIs in England.
Each episode has a distinctive character, the language varying accordingly, archaic, formal, fevered or colloquial. But in each of them there is restraint and honesty, and a refusal to go beyond the natural reticence of the time for the approval of a modern sensibility.
Nash constantly expresses thanks to his ‘master’ although the latter has apparently abandoned him after despatching him on his missionary venture. Phillips might easily have vilified this slave-owning liberal for a conscience-salving gesture, but in fact it turns out his good intentions have been frustrated by others.
Despite never losing his Christian belief, Nash gradually drifts into native ways, taking three wives and even finding some virtue in the local custom of attributing any sudden death to witchcraft and poisoning the accused spell-weaver.
A century earlier, slaver Captain James Hamilton dispassionately records the purchase and rejection of the goods for sale. In one chilling phrase, he logs the arrival of the ship’s longboat with slaves - ‘2 fine boys, and 3 old women whom I instructed them to dispose of.’
Yet this is a man who can in the next breath thank Divine Providence, while quietly admitting he does not approve of his trade. He believes like his late father that ‘the teachings of the Lord were incompatible with his chosen occupation, and that it was folly to try and yoke together these opposites in one breast.’
The final chapter tells the story of the unhappily-married Joyce, befriended by the courteous coloured American GI Travis, and labelled the village as ‘a traitor to my own kind.’ There is a beautiful and appropriate image as she tries to retain the hand of the young soldier, he uncertain of the propriety of their relationship. ‘I wanted to catch it like a slippery fish,” she says.
These are plausible, fallible, sympathetic figures, in what is a modest and surprisingly gentle novel which nevertheless devastatingly exposes one of humanity’s greatest crimes, and its consequences over more than two centuries.
August 7, 2018
Before I read this book, I had never heard of the American Colonization Society. I had no idea that ex-slaves were transported to Liberia under the guise of creating a free, black society. Actually, the intent of the white Americans involved in this project was focused as much on removing from America "a cause of increasing social stress", and on Christianizing the African "heathen", as on giving the black man a chance to create his own free and equal society. What a sad and hypocritical project this was. If the new pioneers didn't die on the voyage across the ocean, they died of malaria or yellow fever once on dry land. They struggled against African natives who did not accept them, and they struggled against poverty and horrible living conditions. And all the while, the slave trade still prospered.
It was odd to read a description of goods being auctioned at an American plantation. The term “colored property” referred to the black slaves. Can’t imagine what that must have felt like.
Well-written book, but because I was reading at first in bits and pieces (while traveling), I missed the whole point of the three stories being linked to the first page, where the three children are sold into slavery. Therefore, the book seemed disjointed to me. It felt like I was reading separate stories, which in fact I was, but I didn’t catch the connection and found the presentation annoying. I also found Phillips writing technique a bit jarring–he roams back and forth in time constantly-I prefer a smoother flow.
That said, I would definitely recommend this book. It can be a tough read; the utter callousness of those involved in stocking the slave ships was disturbing to me. Deaths of their “black livestock” were nothing more than an inconvenience to them and their only concern was the affect the lessened numbers had on their bottom line. Quite an eye-opener, tracing the ramifications of slavery, of being labelled an inferior race, through the eyes of descendants of slaves.
It was odd to read a description of goods being auctioned at an American plantation. The term “colored property” referred to the black slaves. Can’t imagine what that must have felt like.
Well-written book, but because I was reading at first in bits and pieces (while traveling), I missed the whole point of the three stories being linked to the first page, where the three children are sold into slavery. Therefore, the book seemed disjointed to me. It felt like I was reading separate stories, which in fact I was, but I didn’t catch the connection and found the presentation annoying. I also found Phillips writing technique a bit jarring–he roams back and forth in time constantly-I prefer a smoother flow.
That said, I would definitely recommend this book. It can be a tough read; the utter callousness of those involved in stocking the slave ships was disturbing to me. Deaths of their “black livestock” were nothing more than an inconvenience to them and their only concern was the affect the lessened numbers had on their bottom line. Quite an eye-opener, tracing the ramifications of slavery, of being labelled an inferior race, through the eyes of descendants of slaves.
October 1, 2019
To a large degree, this is not so much a novel as it is a collection of four short stories from different epochs, told in different voices, linked by the common themes of race, violence, looking for home, of being a stranger, of dreams falling apart, of experiencing kindness that cannot make up for the hardship, but still place a singular moment of light in it. All of these stories are masterfully told, no matter if they consist of a repatriate's letters, a slave ship's journal, the memories of a dying woman in Denver, or the unwritten diary of an English countryside girl during the Blitz. However, what makes "Crossing the River" truly astonishing is how these two stories are framed: Phillips needs little more than two pages of stream of consciousness writing at the beginning and the end to turn what would otherwise have been a loosely connected set of stories into movements of a symphony, to make those subtle parallels shine like musical motifs and tell a tale of loss, guilt and indistinct longing that goes so much deeper than anything that could actually be put into words. You won't realize quite how brilliant, how moving, how profound beyond time this book is until you've arrived on its very last pages, but believe me, it is worth the wait.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews