Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

A contemporary American masterpiece about music, race, an unforgettable man, and an unreal America during the Civil War era.

At the heart of this remarkable novel is Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical genius who performed under the name Blind Tom.
     Song of the Shank opens in 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere—inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots—who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother.
     As the novel ranges from Tom’s boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. In his symphonic novel, Jeffery Renard Allen blends history and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man who profoundly changes all who encounter him.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Music, African American, Novels, American, Literary Fiction

608 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 2014

About the author

Jeffery Renard Allen is an Associate Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York, the author of two collections of poetry, Stellar Places (Moyer Bell 2007) and Harbors and Spirits (Moyer Bell 1999), and of the widely celebrated and influential novel, Rails Under My Back (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), which won The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction. His other awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, The Chicago Public Library’s Twenty-first Century Award, a Recognition for Pioneering Achievements in Fiction from the African American Literature and Culture Association, a support grant from Creative Capital, and the 2003 Charles Angoff Award for Fiction from The Literary Review. He has been a fellow at The Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, a John Farrar Fellow in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a Walter E. Dakins Fellow in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

His essays, reviews, fiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including The Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, Triquarterly, Ploughshares, Bomb, Hambone, The Antioch Review, StoryQuarterly, African Voices, African American Review, Callaloo, Arkansas Review, Other Voices, Black Renaissance Noire, Notre Dame Review, The Literary Review, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. His work has also appeared in several anthologies, including 110 Stories: New York Writes after September 11, Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology of African American Poetry, and Homeground: Language for an American Landscape.

Born in Chicago, Renard Allen holds a PhD in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Besides teaching at Queens College (including, as of fall 2007, in the college’s new MFA program in creative writing), Allen is also an instructor in the graduate writing program at New School University. He has also taught for Cave Canem, the Summer Literary Seminars program in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Nairobi, Kenya, and in the writing program at Columbia University. In addition, he is the director of the Pan African Literary Forum, a writers’ conference in Accra, Ghana, to be held in the summer of 2008. A resident of Far Rockaway, Queens, Allen is presently at work on the novel Song of the Shank, based on the life of Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century African American piano virtuoso and composer who performed under the stage name Blind Tom.

Reviews

[Makis Dionis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Αποσπάσματα από τη ζωή του Τυφλού Τομ, σε μια εποχή που το μαύρο σήμαινε σκλάβος στη βρώμικη ιστορία της Αμερικής του 19ου αιώνα. Πόσο μάλλον μαύρος, τυφλός και αυτιστικός

Ο Τυφλός Τομ είναι, όμως, ο ναός μέσα στον οποίο κατοικεί η μουσική
Δεν είναι τα αντικείμενα που μετράνε, αλλά ο τρόπος που τα προσεγγίζει κανείς

Οι αλυσίδες όμως βαραίνουν πολύ τον άνθρωπο για να τον βγάλει από την αφάνεια
Ευτυχώς ο Άλλεν, έναν αιώνα μετά μας τον ξανασυστηνει , με ένα έργο στα όρια του κλασσικού

[Sean Owen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm throwing in the towel. I almost never walk away from a book I've started even when the going gets tough or I've soured on the whole thing. To make it a third of the way through and give up isn't something I've ever done before. I really wanted to like Jeffery Renard Allen's "Song of the Shank", but I just couldn't make it through. The language is dense and swirling, the chronology is not linear, but these things don't automatically doom a book. What dooms a book is when these structural elements obscure the characters. Despite massive differences between characters, slaves and their owners, it's often difficult to tell which characters perspective we are reading about. Pre-civil war and the immediate reconstruction years are a massive and complicated topic. I was willing to give Allen some leeway to wander as he gathered enough steam to delve into this terrain, but he never made any progress and only went in wider and wider circles around the center. Perhaps most perplexing about the book was Allen's decision to change create a fictional New York City that is the same in many elements, the draft riots and the resulting black exodus. What was the point of this in a book, based on actual person? If the point is to explore race and this particular moment in American history what is gained by changing the names of places?

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a truly epic, and ambitious novel; a fictionalized account of the life of Blind Tom, 19th century slave and musical prodigy. Mr. Allen's prose is reminiscent of Faulkner's, Morrison's, and Joyce's: rambling and shifty, often with language that can be both dazzling and maddening at the same time. For me, the novel was a bit too long-winded, and wordy; but if its a riff on stylistics and diction, it truly works. Ultimately, the story of Blind Tom, his white patron Eliza; and that of his mother, and a mysterious benefactor who is determined to reunite him with his mother is a bittersweet, tragicomic one that is unforgettable.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not win this book from Goodreads - rather, I bought it because of a glowing review in the NY Times Book Review (also listed as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2014). A terrible disappointment. I am not turned off by dense fiction - which this is - and was, in fact, hoping that the book would make good on many of the promises I read about, and which I love in literature: magical realism; poetic prose; historical fiction; race relations; a Faulknerian influence. Unfortunately, it falls flat on almost every score. Allen does owe a large debt to Faulkner but there is far less reward in struggling through Song Of The Shank than Absalom! Absalom!

I want to find the author of the Times review and ask him what his definition of "masterly" is.

By far the greatest issue, which one reviewer refers to quite well, is the absolutely maddening, off-putting and unrelenting use of parentheses. These, to a one, break up any flow and poetry that the writing has. At their best, they contain some interesting thoughts, although these would have far more impact if they were not parenthetical; at their worst, they make no sense whatsoever, or, in trying to sound deep, come off as "deep" in a high school sense and made me want to throw the book across the room.

Here is a redacted example of what I mean. These don't occur nearly as close together as I'm putting them, but it sure feels like they do: "Tabbs wondered, What thoughts curled around them at that critical juncture in time? (Standing at the crossroad.) What force of will urged restraint? (Try to feel it now.) Moreover, how were they able to throw themselves back into the fray, not to mention (to say nothing of) the entire matter of punishment and retribution. The regiment continued at its own pace mile after mile, some (see it) indefinable substance pumping through them... They work with axes, saws, planes, other (carpentry) tools..."

What?!?

These make the book so very unpleasant to read. I found myself scanning ahead to see if there were any more parentheses coming up, and losing track of what I was reading. Did this book have an editor?? But the real problem is that there is, really, no story whatsoever. If I didn't know Blind Tom's backstory there would be no possible way to contextualize anything that was happening. Yet it lacks any depth as a parable or tale free of context. Also mentioned by several reviewers on Goodreads was the lack of connection to the characters - I have read very few books where, 100 pages into them, there is absolutely no sense in my mind of whom I am reading about or why I should care about them. Relatedly, it was puzzling that Allen creates "The City" that is essentially New York, even insofar as the map given in the front of the book, yet renders it instead some nameless fictional place, while invoking real nearby locales like Saratoga Springs - what is the reason for this? It's all so vexing as to make the book confounding, not because of the complexity of language but rather the poor, and confusing, stylistic choices.

[R.G. Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Beneath history is another history we’ve made without even knowing it.” This revelation by one of the characters in Jeffrey Renard Allen’sSong of the Shank is the same revelation one has when reading this excellent book.

Focusing on the autistic savant “Blind Tom,” the world-renowned piano prodigy born of slaves, Allen’s novel creates an indelibly realistic portrait of life in both the North and South before, during and after the American Civil War. Compared by the New York Times to Faulkner, Allen’s narrative fractures the chronology of Tom’s life while exploring the question Who should profit from the talent of an artist who cannot care for himself?—a question both timely and timeless. Tom is handed off from owner through a series of managers, both black and white, astonishing audiences with his gifted recitals and baffling those close to him with his oracular utterances.

Allen’s narrative, which stretches from Georgia to New York City and beyond to the segregated island of Edgemere, evokes the violence and dangers that showed that Emancipation was not the same as freedom—a truth that is as current as today’s headlines.

Perhaps Chinua Achebe’s words best express the importance of a piece of literature like Song of the Shank: “It's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.” The world of Blind Tom is indeed very far away, but we need to recognize its echoes in our own world, how some songs remain the same.

[Casey]

The writing is beautiful but also incredibly difficult to follow. I am reading this at the tenth of the pace I normally read. It's slow-going and dense, at times confusing but always beautifully rendered.

[Marvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel, set in the 1850s & '60s, is based on the real-life experiences of "Blind Tom," an African American slave who toured the world as a musical prodigy. I'm very interested in that story, but 100 pages in, I've learned almost nothing about him, and I'm tired of reading sentences I don't understand, of not knowing where I am in time & place, of being confused about what's going on at a basic level. I suspect that people who can negotiate it might find this very rewarding, but I'm not one of them.

[Jon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made it to page 68 and could go no further. I enjoyed the subject matter and story but found myself getting stuck on trying to figure out character dialogue vs narration. It became confusing, then irritating and was no longer enjoyable.

[Straw · Rating 1 out of 5]

Trans* people are not monstrous forms, and the author of this book can go fuck himself.

[BookishStitcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is definitely in the literary fiction category of being a more time consuming read. It took me over 2 months. The shift in perspectives reminded me of Faulkner. I can enjoy literary fiction like this whereas I do not enjoy Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow. My only complaint is I wanted more about Blind Tom and less about a lot of the side characters. This story is told during the Civil War, and Blind Tom is a black man who grew up a slave, but also as performer due to his astounding musical abilities. His story was fascinating, but of the 608 pages it wasn't that much of it, which I was sad about.

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a most challenging novel. Although the prose is majestic, and the writer so obviously talented, the pacing is laggard. This novel fictionalizes the story of Blind Tom Wiggins who apparently was quite the entertaining pianist from an early age, beginning around 6. The story is set in the year after the civil war has ended, rambling around in time between 1866 and 1870. There are frequent shifts in perspective and setting, making this novel sometimes difficult to digest. Supposedly, Jeffery Allen took over 10 years to complete this novel, and maybe that accounts for the quick shifts in time, without giving the reader much context, and so it feels at times disconnected and disjointed.

Although one gets a sense of history from the story, you have to remain very focused as you peruse this book. I think if one is drawn to poetic prose, this is a book you will absolutely love. If you desire to have that prose married to heady pacing and readily identifiable settings and context, you will be underwhelmed. All in all it is a fascinating story of a riveting historical character, but it failed to be engrossing for me, and I could never get in a comfortable reading flow, hence the 2 stars.

[Michael Brockley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeffrey Renard Allen has the writing chops to write a great novel but SONG OF THE SHANK is not that novel. Instead , this story is smothered beneath a prose that seems to have wrestled the lifeblood from this narrative about a blind slave boy who is a musical savant. Or is it, characters appear and disappear for lengthy periods of time and the writing style at one point or another hides chronology, setting and characters. It is as if a baseball umpire took on a role in a game such that the outcome of each inning relied upon the exploits of the umpire rather than the skills of the players. Much of the book seemed to be focused on the efforts of the story's actors as they tried to control and exploit Blind Tom who is an interesting character when he is given an opportunity to speak. Ultimately, however, SONG OF THE SHANK lacks a protagonist and its antagonist is the editor who did not help the author discover the language and music that might have been realized this novel's potential.

[Ramona · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the subject matter, the cover (!), how this book felt in my hands--the heftiness of it--even the size of the pages, but I had to actually force myself to continue reading this historical fiction novel (truth be told, I still have 80 pages or so left of the 570, after four months!). The author's style of writing is difficult, confusing, and off-putting, but there are many beautifully written passages nonetheless. It's a shame that I just stopped caring enough to battle through to them.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF'd at 100 pages.
This was a curious book because of the choices that were made in writing style. I'm generally a fan of writing that requires a little more work (e.g. anything by Eimear McBride) as generally the extra effort is afforded a purpose. In the case of McBride the extreme stream-of-partial-thoughts further highlights the characters' vulnerability. But here the writing style seems.. at odds with the story. It is present-tense, third person with first person thoughts jumping in and asides in parentheses (like this).
All the style really seems to do here is make the story very hard to follow and the subject matter is already pretty disturbing. It was also horribly unclear for the first 20 or so pages whether the young blind man was a husband/child/slave/ward and subsequently finding out who he was makes the earlier scenes in the bath even more odd, and again, very at odds with the character of the young woman later in the book.

I also don't think I'll ever be able to get over seeing the n-word in print. Even in an historical context..

Although this came highly recommended from the local bookseller, I gave it my standard 100 pages and reading any more felt like a chore, so I'm putting it aside for someone else to enjoy.
An overwhelming meh.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I suspect that this book is part of a conversation that I have been totally unaware of. Mr. Allen seems to be making a statement about what a novel can be, and how a novel can be expressed. I thought of it like the Impressionist response to the Realists. Not my cup of tea.

I managed OK with the lack of, say, quotation marks to differentiate between dialog and description. I handled the jumps in time and point of view; little new there. What I found most difficult was the way Mr. Allen focused on narrating the stream of sensations and thoughts through his point-of-view characters. For a while I thought he was trying to portray the way someone on the Autism spectrum, such as how he portrayed Blind Tom, would experience the events of the story. That theory didn't survive long. After that theory lay tattered, I was left with just a scramble of sense descriptions, stream of consciousness interjections, dialogs, and inner monologue thoughts. I could follow it, but it didn't do anything for me. The bold brush strokes never merged together into a clear image for me.

This novel had a bunch of characters, and a few events, and occasionally touched on something that I could recognize as a story. It demonstrated that Mr. Allen is a very good writer, because if someone less experienced tried to do this it would end up completely unreadable. I kept reading it in hope that by the end it would all come together and I'd find something I could appreciate. Yet alas, it didn't, and I couldn't.

[Lindsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

For the first time I have hated a book I won. The story was slow, the pacing was bad, I couldn't make myself care about the characters. I also really didn't like the writing style. The author did this weird thing where he would put little asides in parentheses. It was very distracting and unnecessary. This may be someone else's cup of tea but I was just not interested. DNF

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on a true story of Blind Tom, a savant slave pianist, who can play anything he can hear once, this novel embellishes and invents enough to make this truly fiction, yet interesting as a statement about the time period nonetheless.

[Cherisa B]

This is a Did Not Finish/Parking Lot title for me. 160 pages and no clue what was going on and unable to formulate why I should care made it impossible to continue, at least for now.

[Chloë Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

i struggle deeply with what to do with this book. first i feel that i was just kind of in the wrong medium. i deeply believe in audiobooks as necessary tools for critical understanding. and. yet. this book was not for audio. there's too many turns of phrase. too much coalescence around type script. too few pauses. i think that in that way, and also in the structuring of the year, i lost a lot of the characters. a lot of the story. a lot of the purpose. maybe i wasn't listening as hard as i shuld have been either. the past and present play threw me in getting the whole story. i feel like i lost tom in the fodder. i lost him (and its his story isn't it) in their trying to build a world around everything that made him. but it was supposed to be *about* him?? i don't know. i have very little i can say that i can put together around the work. and that feels like a failure of me and a failure of structure. and with that im left troubled about what i read, which was arguably literarily beautiful and prose tight and well done, and what i got, which was convoluted *to me* in its final manifestation.

either way. beautiful prose should be honored for its beauty alone sometimes, right? 2.75 stars. maybe a physical reread will do me good. 2.75 stars.

[Harris Siahamis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Έκανα μεγάλη προσπάθεια για να το διαβάσω αλλά μετά τις πρώτες 100 πυκνές σελίδες του το παράτησα. Δε βρήκα νόημα στο να συνεχίσω να διαβαζω κάτι που δε με τραβάει ούτε προκαλεί το ενδιαφέρον στο ελάχιστο. Το ζήτημα θα μπορούσε να είναι ενδιαφέρον αλλά η γραφή και η ανάπτυξη των ιστοριών ήταν πολύ μπερδεμένη.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just can't even single out what I didn't like about this book because there was so much. Difficult to read, did not flow, story that didn't seem to have a purpose. To me this was just a really bad book and not my cup of tea.

[Jonathan Frederick Walz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid...but I don't know what all the fuss was about. Reminded me somewhat of a Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James.

[S D · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dense read about a fascinating man with wonderful, poetic language. Sadly, it wasn't for me and became an endurance test just to finish it.

[Mike White · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Song of the Shank, the slave and piano prodigy Blind Tom is like a crystal ball, the inscrutable focus of the characters' thinking and struggling on the role and future of race in post-Civil War America. To his owner and manager, Tom is little more than a well-trained circus monkey, raising money for the Confederate cause as he entertains and delights white people across the world. To an African-American con man from New York, Tom is a gift to his race, who are entitled to the glory and the financial rewards of Tom's accomplishments. Tom himself, likely an autistic savant in real life, stays closed within himself, making pronouncements that could be the words of either an idiot or an oracle, performing the classical repertoire and his own little compositions, sometimes just a bit off, showing him to be either an imperfect imitator of the music of dead white men, or one who hears a genuine music of Black experience.

But don't get me wrong, this book is not some didactic, philosophical discussion of race. It's a fantastic novel with well-realized characters who try to make sense of their experiences of slavery, the New York draft riots, and Reconstruction, with Tom as the focal point of their ambitions, struggles, failures, and confusions. We never know what's going inside Tom's head, in fact we never even see Tom at the height of his world-famous career. The voices in the books are those of the rich, varied characters who fall into Tom's orbit: his slave mother, his secessionist owner, his entrepreneurial manager, his earnest caretakers, and the leaders of a fictional Black refugee community who take Tom after the war.

Like the post-war Zone in Gravity's Rainbow, where for a brief moment, many alternate possibilities for the future exist before they're foreclosed by the System of the world we really live in, Song of the Shank explores a brief, post-war space (represented mostly by a fictional refugee island in New York for victims of the draft riots and freed slaves) where the future of race in America could have been set on a different course, with Tom perhaps playing an important role. Instead, the ideals of Reconstruction failed and the door to an alternate future was slammed shut.

With Pynchonesque alternate realities and Faulkner-inspired images of human dysfunction, but also with a voice that is unquestionably original and contemporary, this book was one of my favorite reads this year.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fictionalized account of Blind Tom Wiggins, an autistic musical savant and slave who lived around the time of the Civil War. The style is poetic prose, and it takes awhile to understand the flow and rhythm of the storytelling. The tale is not told in a linear fashion, numerous characters are introduced, and the narrative shuttles back and forth among the various characters and time frames. . In particular, the use of pronouns makes it very difficult to figure out which characters are being referred to. It's all rather confusing and rather a drudge to read. I did enjoy the character of Blind Tom, and I found the research I did online fascinating. Here is an example of the prose style, which is actually one of the sections of the book I enjoyed the most: [from pages 309-310] "The performer is a facilitator, a middleman for the--unpresent, often deceased--composer, bearing a tremendous responsibility of presenting the composer's music to the public while staying true to the composer's ideas and intentions, to his thoughts and feelings. But most pianists lack the faculty of actually hearing the composer, of hearing themselves as the composer, of hearing the text. (Unfortunately I have to reconcile myself to the thought that nobody will every play my works to my liking as I had imagined them. Chopin.) Sometimes it is necessary to go far then come back. Imagine the melody as heard from an instrument of different quality from the piano, say the oboe, trumpet, flute or French horn. But how does one teach the blind, who have no way of first seeing the text on their own, but must always arrive at it secondhand, through another. This way." There are beautiful passages, as well as those with creative and clever wordplay. But 565 pages of this type of style was just not to my taste. I guess I am just not a sophisticated enough reader.

[Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won “Song of the Shank” as an ARC from a Goodreads giveaway. I entered the giveaway based on the synopsis which tickled my interest but did not spark any particularly strong excitement. I failed to note the work filled up just over 600 pages. I usually do not take on books of such length unless I have a strong enthusiasm for the material. That being said, I am glad I pushed forward with this book. To anyone who may be hesitating: Give it a go but plan to go slowly.

I found Mr. Allen is a very talented author. The subject of Blind Tom seemed interesting but did not spark any particular passion on my part. This remained generally true as I read and finished. (Though I must say it is impossible not to feel bad for Tom.) For me, the strength of this work is in the writing itself. Mr. Allen’s beautiful writing makes it easy to appreciate the passion he has for the subject even if the reader does not necessarily share it. The writing is very rich. I’d venture that some people may call it “too wordy” but I would not agree as I never found it to be overwhelming or impeding.

Still, “Song of the Shank” is not a particularly easy read. There were a few times when I had to rewind a tad to figure out exactly where things stood. Having to do so did not bother me much. Reading this novel, you can feel it took a lot of time and hard work to craft. With such works, the reader inherits a responsibility to put forth a little more effort themselves than they may usually need to give. When reading Mr. Allen’s writing, your “hard work” is repaid many times over in the currency of beautiful prose.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Not a personal “favorite” but it definitely deserves a good rating based on the author’s outstanding talent.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

This finely written historical novel centers around Thomas Greene Wiggins, better known as Blind Tom, born as a slave in 1849, who rose to prominence as a piano prodigy. Although such things were not known of or recognized during the 19th century, Wiggins is now believed to have been an autistic savant. Although Wiggins lived until 1908, Allen focuses on the years just before and just after the Civil War.
Although I found the book a bit draggy at times, I found the story and characters Allen wove around Blind Tom very interesting. Blind Tom himself is much less of a protagonist and more of a central axis or linchpin around which everything else revolves. The strongest characters are those to whom Tom is entrusted over the years: Eliza Bethune, Perry Oliver, Tom's mother Charity Wiggins, and Tabbs Gross. Each of them has a complex relationship to Tom, engaging in varying degrees of caregiving and exploitation.
I did wish, to some degree, that Allen gave a little more focus and voice to Tom himself, and that he would have given more attention to the role of music in the lives of Tom and those around him. I occasionally got the sense that music was somewhat incidental - as if Tom's talents could have been in any area and it wouldn't have made a difference to the story.
Nevertheless, I really liked and admired what Allen did with Tom's story. Song of the Shank is a very subtle and meditative exploration of race relations in Civil War era America, the tensions between exploitation and care or protection, and how talent is treated and managed.

[S.W. Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allen employed circular plotting mechanics similar to Alice Monroe but on a grander scale. Song of the Shank is an artistic masterpiece, but I find this strategy tiring in a short story and almost overwhelming in a long novel. None the less, I got to the other side and think I found the bullseye Allen kept circling around for 580 pages. Blind Tom encompasses the trope of the magical negro who helps transform the lives of those around him. There is some purposeful juxtaposition with one of the original members of this literary conceit: Jesus. Jesus was most likely a dark-skinned middle Eastern man and nothing like the light-skinned caucasian version we see everywhere today. Obviously, Blind Tom was an autistic savant and a musical prodigy. He demonstrated incredible God-given talents that spiritually uplifted members of his own race while ironically funding the Confederate war effort to keep them in physical chains. He dared to stare into the sun and blinded himself in the process, but all the glory of creation that he absorbed came bursting forth in his musical acrobatics.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received an ARC copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway.

I tried to finish this book. I really did. It's been sitting on my shelf for almost a year now, and I've tried to read it two different times -- the first about six months ago and the second this week. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to call it "done for now" at this point.

I have a lot of respect for the author and the amount of work and research that went into this novel, but I am unable to connect to the writing style. In short spurts, I really enjoy the melodic prose, the asides, and the beautiful descriptions. But in this 500+ page book, I find my mind wandering and reach the end of a page only to realize I haven't been paying attention. Again.

I am glad for the chance to read this novel -- or at least try to anyway. Maybe I'll pick it up again someday and be able to wade through the dense prose to get to the heart of the story.

[Navdeep Dhillon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like The Moor's Account, I really liked how Jeffrey breathes life into his characters and makes their lives totally believable. Thomas Greene Wiggins, actually did exist, which in many respects brings with it more complications when you're dealing with a historical figure. Slavery is not a central focus and is a part of the world we're introduced to. The root of all human evil is shown to be money and power. White people and black people all see Thomas Greene Wiggins, the central character, as a money maker because of his natural musical talent and the power they all wield over him because he is a slave and "feeble minded." He rises to fame in Congo Square in New Orleans in the 18th century when slaves were permitted to perform in a sanctioned talent show of sorts, which garnered crowds of white people, and very quickly became the it spot.