A High Wind in Jamaica

by Richard Hughes

New edition of a classic adventure novel and one of the most startling, highly praised stories in English literature - a brilliant chronicle of two sensitive children's violent voyage from innocence to experience.

After a terrible hurricane levels their Jamaican estate, the Bas-Thorntons decide to send their children back to the safety and comfort of England. On the way their ship is set upon by pirates, and the children are accidentally transferred to the pirate vessel. Jonsen, the well-meaning pirate captain, doesn't know how to dispose of his new cargo, while the children adjust with surprising ease to their new life. As this strange company drifts around the Caribbean, events turn more frightening and the pirates find themselves increasingly incriminated by the children's fates. The most shocking betrayal, however, will take place only after the return to civilization.

The swift, almost hallucinatory action of Hughes's novel, together with its provocative insight into the psychology of children, made it a best seller when it was first published in 1929 and has since established it as a classic of twentieth-century literature - an unequaled exploration of the nature, and limits, of innocence.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Adventure, Novels, Book Club, Literature

279 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.

Several other authors on Goodreads are also named Richard Hughes.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

A High Wind in Jamaica is written in a quite extraordinary and almost mysterious language:

Not a breath of breeze even yet ruffled the water: yet momentarily it trembled of its own accord, shattering the reflections: then was glassy again. On that the children held their breath, waiting for it to happen.
A school of fish, terrified by some purely submarine event, thrust their heads right out of the water, squattering across the bay in an arrowy rush, dashing up sparkling ripples with the tiny heave of their shoulders: yet after each disturbance all was soon like hardest, dark, thick, glass.

In this novel Richard Hughes undertook a very special journey into the world of children’s consciousness therefore the book is unique.

They gazed at him in astonishment and disillusion. There is a period in the relations of children with any new grown-up in charge of them, the period between first acquaintance and the first reproof, which can only be compared to the primordial innocence of Eden. Once a reproof has been administered, this can never be recovered again.

An adult might think that he’s perfectly understood a child but he’s just formed in his mind his own conception that may have nothing to do with child’s thoughts.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s like Richard Hughes had never read a novel before writing this one. He has no idea! Let’s break into stage dialogue here. In the middle of some action sequence let’s have a page about children’s games.

The shocks here are actually shocking because the prose is so cosy and jolly, all about these kids who grow up in the wilds of Jamaica and then are send by their parents to England to be educated, but their ship is taken by friendly pirates who deliberately don’t have any guns, and who end up being kept like a gaggle of ship’s cats by the friendly pirates who don’t know what the hell to do with them. They say this novel is Peter Pan divided by Lord of the Flies, and that sounds about right.

The slapdash extemporised off the cuff fumbling and wambling way Richard Hughes leads us through this very morally dodgy story is delicious. You never know when another bit of casual violence will sandbag you or if he’ll just tell you about three-year-old Laura’s dolls made of bits of rope.

I would like to discuss all the queasy moral stuff in detail but that would be Spoiler City so I cannot, my lips are sealed.

All the other reviews of this little novel will tell you how very odd it is, and they are so right, and they mark it down and they are so wrong. I loved its oddness. So, in the closing days of 2017, a five star read from 1929. That's the world of books for you. Who’d have thought.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where has this book been all my life? I've been dreamily gazing out my window all these long hot summers, yearning for just the novel to fulfill my every need—to take me in its sweet-lovin' arms and say without ever quite saying, 'I'm the one. And I've brought the hot oils and penicillin.' It seems a little cruel, or at least irresponsible, for A High Wind in Jamaica to have hidden in the shadows of literary obscurity for so long, forcing me to waste precious hours of my life reading dreck like V.S. Naipaul and Auster's Brooklyn Follies, but why bemoan the past when in fact we're the lucky ones? Some poor saps read all their lives without meeting their literary soulmates and then die with that nagging dissatisfaction pursuing them to the grave. Not me. I've found Salinger, Proust, Bernhard, Krasznahorkai, Richard Hughes, and the rest. (Okay—so I have a lot of soulmates.) This is my orgy of destiny, and the Do Not Disturb sign is on the doorknob.

Just now I said that A High Wind in Jamaica has been hiding 'in the shadows of literary obscurity.' That's not exactly true. It came in at number seventy-one (I believe) on the Modern Library's ridiculous best novels of 20th century list. But still—it doesn't exactly have widespread name recognition like Hemingway, Orwell, or Joyce. It should be just as well-known, of course, but this isn't a fair world. Remember that the Kardashians are celebrities. (That's my current back-to-reality incantation. It quickly counteracts any tendency to expect justice in this world.)

A High Wind in Jamaica is a wickedly unsentimental portrait of childhood and the innocence thereof. It is a needful antidote to the prevailing sense that childhood innocence is the equivalent of moral goodness—because it clearly is not. Young children are largely amoral and, as such, are capable of nearly anything. From the vantage of our adult morality, children can seem callous, cruel, and perhaps even evil. This is a misinterpretation, of course, because they as yet lack the signal posts to act in defiance of a proscribed morality. What they are (to a certain extent) is unmoderated expression. This is a little terrifying to us once we've been fully domesticated by society. And Richard Hughes understands this.

The story is simple enough. In the 1800s, several children are shipped by their parents from their Jamaican plantations back home to London to avoid the environmental and climatic perils of island life. On the way, their ship is hijacked by pirates and they are unintentionally taken prisoner. Thereafter, they become accomplices of the pirates in their continuing adventures. Hughes embellishes the story with an astonishing gift for imagery and turn of phrase and a knack for the blackest kind of humor. I'm well aware that the vague synopsis above is likely to turn away as many readers as it will woo. Just let me assure you that it isn't what you think, and it's probably like nothing you've ever read. It may not be your literary soulmate, but its uniqueness of tone, vision, and temperament deserves to be read.

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

synopsis: pirates can have a heart; children, never.

I have a shelf called "World of Insects" where I put literary novels whose perspectives on human nature are cold and detached; these stories often function as dissections. They provide examples of how humans lack a moral compass and follow predictably selfish behavior patterns. I have another shelf called "These Fragile Lives" with books that illustrate how humans are a complex and delicate web of emotions. These warmer stories depict human nature with a certain empathy. A High Wind in Jamaica belongs on both shelves. This off-putting but still quite absorbing anti-adventure has a dual perspective. The writing is both sardonic and sunny, at once disturbingly realistic and gorgeously poetic; the tone is light that conceals darkness; the narrative is a wonderful series of surprises yet is also one that is bleak, deterministic. The pirates are sympathetic until one is reminded that some men want adult things from a child. The kids are delightful until one is reminded that some children aren't overly concerned with truth or kindness. Remind me to never go on a pirate adventure with either children or pirates!

moral of the tale: trust no one.

[Jaguar Kitap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Önümüzdeki aylarda yeni edisyonu ile yayınlarımız arasındaki yerini alacaktır.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprising and unique. A disturbing, dark wind blows through the whole book, but told in a playful, ironic tone, almost chipper -- a tone you expect to be used in a children's story, almost.

This ingenious little novel published in 1929 surely provided inspiration for Lord of the Flies and then even later The Laws of the Skies and other stories that show a rather sinister view of the nature of children.

I didn't know much going into it, but I can tell you it wasn't what I expected. That's the charm of the book. It's not what you expect, it's a rare tropical bird.

The children in this book, on a sea voyage from Jamaica to England, are abducted by pirates. Ooh, an adventure story with children! This'll be fun, right? Yes, it is fun, but the book is so brilliantly written against type.

Pirates, as we all know, are morally compromised creatures. They haven't got a great reputation, what with their history of violent pillaging. Children, on the other hand, are worse: amoral creatures. Scarily adaptable, self-absorbed, manipulative and cold. Brrrrrrr. So cold.

At least, the children in this book are. There's something mysterious about Richard Hughes' depiction of these children, something disturbing, and although perhaps hyperbolic, something quite TRUE that's captured here. The lack of empathy, the wild animal way they survive, it's a fleeting stage that humans seem to inhabit before societal rules set in.

Or, you may choose to read this differently, that Hughes isn't commenting on the sinister nature of children; rather, he is examining the corruption of innocence. That their time on the pirate ship has changed them forever. Children who once truly mourned the loss of their cat now don't blink an eye at the loss of a sibling.

I would love to hear from people who have read this novel - how do you see it? What is really happening on these high seas?

Either way, the book manages to disturb and entertain, maintaining a duality of light and dark that I truly admire.

It's important to mention that the language and tone of this book are a delight. The first person narration is also interesting, with the unknown "I" popping in a handful of times, adding to the eccentricity and bedtime story feel of the book. Just know that it is NOT a bedtime story, and there's a lot of deliciously strange things going on here for adults to ponder.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've rated this book a five before. Now a decades-later second reading, just finished. I would rate it higher, but I can't find the extra stars.



The NYRB cover illustration is a small segment of Storm Gathers by Henry Darger.
Darger’s story is far stranger than High Wind. Here’s Wiki’s first paragraph on him:

Henry Joseph Darger, Jr.; c. April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story. The visual subject matter of his work ranges from idyllic scenes in Edwardian interiors and tranquil flowered landscapes populated by children and fantastic creatures, to scenes of horrific terror and carnage depicting young children being tortured and massacred. Much of his artwork is mixed media with collage elements. Darger's artwork has become one of the most celebrated examples of outsider art.


This 1929 novel is the masterpiece of the British author Richard Hughes (1900-1976). He wrote other works, several of which, like this one, have been reprinted in recent years by NYRB. But High Wind in Jamaica (also called Innocent Voyage) has been rated on GR by more than twenty times the number of readers as any of these other works. I first became aware of the novel forty or fifty years ago, from my old copy of Good Reading, in which it is described as “a revealing study of the separate world of childhood.”

The story begins in Jamaica sometime around the middle of the nineteenth century. Slavery having been outlawed in 1838 (the Emancipation), the sugar plantations have crumbled into disuse, and more and more of the buildings associated with them have fallen into ruins. One of the former estates, Ferndale, is now occupied by a British family, the Bas-Thorntons, who have come out from England a few years previously.

The children of the family are John, Emily, Edward, Rachel and Laura. The latter three are the “Liddlies” in the family; Laura the youngest is four. John is the oldest, and can still vaguely remember England.

What he remembered was sitting at the top of a flight of stairs, which was fenced off from him by a little gate, playing with a red toy milk-cart: and he knew, without having to look, that in the room on the left baby Emily was lying in her cot. Emily said she could remember something which sounded like a Prospect of the Backs of some Brick Houses at Richmond: but she might have invented it. The others had been born in the Island – Edward only just.

The “high wind” of the title is a hurricane, which blows the top off the old mansion in which the Bas-Thornton family live (it blows down the whole thing, in fact – the top was only the first to go). As they begin rebuilding, the parents decide that the children really must be returned to England, for education among other reasons. Thus the High Wind precipitates the Innocent Voyage. (The Bas-Thornton children are joined on the voyage back to England by two other children from a nearby estate – Margaret, thirteen, and her younger brother Harry, who runs with the Liddlies.) A bit of a Margaret in fact is an incredible character in the story, who plays a crucial part in many plot turnings - but is left almost completely unknown to the reader by Hughes. All we can do is imagine her inner world – more like an adult’s than the younger children, but still … I don’t know, very enigmatic. I find Hughes’ handling of the character extremely interesting. I’m sure others would disagree.)

Only a few pages into the story the reader is introduced to the real locale of the adventure, the children’s inner reality. Emily, the main child character, loves to catch green grass-lizards.

Her room was full of these and other pets, some alive, others probably dead. She also had tame faeries, and a familiar, or oracle, the White Mouse with an Elastic Tail, who was always ready to settle any point in question, and whose rule was a rule of iron – especially over Rachel, Edward, and Laura … To Emily, his interpreter, he allowed, of course, certain privileges: and with John, he quite wisely did not interfere.

He was omnipresent: the faeries were more localized, living in a small hole in the hill guarded by two dagger-plants.

Hughes has constructed this tale to tell the reader how the inner world of children is so immensely different from the outer world of adult reality. Now this is a novel, so we needn’t worry about whether this insight about child psychology is correct or not. To me it seems awfully persuasive. Over and over he relates an event in the normal way of describing it – then continues, “but to the children …”, and describes how they, or each of them in turn, interprets what they have seen and heard as something that an adult would dismiss as stupid, or fantastical.

Thus, the interactions of the children and the adults in the story form a winding series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. The tragic effects of these mistaken conclusions and assumptions on the part of both children and adults are the subject of this magnificent novel.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure what I expected from this book, but whatever it was, this wasn’t it. It is about a group of children who are taken by pirates, so perhaps I thought it would be in the vein of Treasure Island. It is about the children and more or less from their viewpoint, so perhaps I thought it would be more juvenile or innocent. Its plot reeks of adventure, so perhaps I thought it would be more action and less character study. What it turned out to be was captivating and, while told in a very lighthearted manner, a bit dark.

I have not encountered a character like young Emily since my first reading of Lord of the Flies, and it is, perhaps, only the raw unpredictability of her that garners the comparison. For anyone who thinks children are simple or lack the ability to deceive, she will make you reconsider that position. What is stunning is that she is wholly believable for me, and her sallies between her recognition of the adult problems around her and the childish approach she takes to them is eerily accurate.

There are tragedies galore in this book, as there would be, of course, in a situation like this one. No one seems precisely to blame, but there is a degree of carelessness that it is difficult to overlook, which begins long before the pirates make their fated entrance. The adults seem particularly clueless and make it all up as they go along. None of them seems aware of the need for truth in the stories they tell, and none of them seems to see the implications of what effect this adventure has upon the children.

The story begins with a hurricane, a high wind, and that wind blows through the entire novel, tossing the characters about, quite against their will, and landing them, as it lands the black woman who is tossed by the storm across the fields and into a wall, wherever it desires. But a hurricane is an innocent thing, even though it kills, for there is no intent...after all, it is just a wind, out of control of anyone save God.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have ever fucking read. Don't even read this review... Just go read the book already! Then you can come back and read the rest of this review.

First of all the subject matter cannot be better: pirates, kids, pigs, monkeys, goats, earthquakes, hurricanes, clue-less adults.

Secondly, it's the language, stupid! The language is so fucking great. Hughes sometimes forms the most un-intelligeable sentences with the weirdest fucking words, but string them up in a way that gets across something you wouldn't get with a sensible one.

Next, the narrator: he is so funny. He's always coming in at odd times to tell us his opinion, but rarely outright. He's subtle about it.

Also, the book is full of surprises. Every other chapter presents a weird twist. But it's not a plot-heavy book, by that I mean it doesn't rely on the plot or the twists to make it good. Considering the 500-pages worth of shit that happens in this 200-page book, it is surprisingly leisurely and pleasantly aimless in its plot, until closer to the end.

This book is brilliantly crafted to lull you into one state while shocking you constantly out of it.

This book resists to the very end in giving you the sentimentalism you want, in giving in to your pre-conceived ideas of how things should be. And for that it is pure genius.

This book is entertaining in that page-turning way, to the highest degree.

This book is often laugh out loud funny.

This book does not moralize. It is light reading, but also very heavy if you want to read into it. But most of all, it is light.

There is no lull in this book. It goes straight through.

[Sinem A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok çok iyi bir kitaptı!
Hele son sayfalarda bir ceza avukatı ile bir yazarı karşılaştırdığı paragraf; gördüğüm en iyi edebiyat-hukuk karşılaştırmalarından biri oldu sanırım.
Aslında romancı kendisinin de söylediği gibi her şeyi söylemişti. Belkide her şeyi olduğu gibi söyleyen tek kişiydi.
Ancak biz okurların gerçekte ne olduğunu anlayabilmemiz için çocukları gerçekten tanıdığımızı zannettiğimiz ön yargısından bir şekilde kurtulmamız gerekiyordu sanki. Bu ön yargıdan kurtulduğumuzda ise bizi koca bir bilinmezliğin beklediğini kabul etmeliydik.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

"After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances."



A shortcut I use when thinking about a novel, and it IS a shortcut, is to imagine fitting the book I've just read within a series of other books, or as a color made from mixing several books together. It is childish, rough, and only gets me part of the way there, but it is a start (even if it is an adolescent start). I also, with a book I am unfamiliar with, try to avoid poisoning the well by reading reviews or opinions about it. I want to come to it clean, fresh, to see it for a moment with my own eyes.

So? What books did I mix for this one? For me it was a combination of Peter Pan, Heart of Darkness, and Lord of the Flies. Yeah. Wrap your head around that. It was, however, more poetic than any of these. The prose was like a fever dream. Some of the scenes in Jamaica were lush and magical. It was told with colors seen from a child's eyes, events were described through the experience of a child. It wasn't just a trick. Hughes mastered this. He didn't condescend to children. He didn't put them on some victorian pedestal. He measured them by age, by experience, and oriented his story accordingly.

The story really is about the loss of innocence (oh, and an earthquake), but as much it is a story about how resilient children are to that loss of innocence (oh, and an alligator). How much children live in the now and wrap that now in myths. Hughes gave the children in this novel the right to be human, to deal with complexity in their own way. I'm still buzzing a bit from how much I really dug this novel. I'm glad I read it and am still surprised I was never exposed to it before.

[Yücel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muhteşem hikâye, daha da muhteşem bir Emily. Hararetle tavsiye ediyorum.

[Argos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bazı kitaplar çoğunluk tarafından çok beğenilir, “Jamaika’da Bir Fırtına” da bu grup kitaplar içinde yer alanlardan. Ancak ben aynı “Sineklerin Tanrısı”nda olduğu gibi kitaba da bir türlü ısınamadım. Psikolojik roman olarak tanımlanıyor ve çocukların büyümeleri sırasındaki özellikle ruhsal değişimleri öne çıkardığı söyleniyor arka kapak tanıtım yazısında.

Kitabın adından da anlaşılacağı gibi erişkinler için bile yıkıcı olabilecek travmatik olayların olduğu ortamda bu incelemesini çocuklar için yapıyor yazar. Fırtına, korsanlar, ölümler, zorlu geçen günler... Yazarın uslubuna bir diyeceğim yok ama kurgu hem hızlı çekim bir film gibi, hem de inandırıcılıktan uzak. Bu durumda yapılan özellikle psikolojik tahliller de abartılı veya inandırıcı değil. Büyüklere yazılmış masal kıvamında. Kısaca sevemedim.

[A. Raca · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Karanlık, o tehtidkar parmağın üzerini, hızla inen bir perde gibi örttü."

Mutlu azınlığa!

💚

[Ludmilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kim demişti ya da nereden okudum hatırlayamıyorum, bu kitabın Peter Pan ile Sineklerin Tanrısının bir karışımı olarak kabul edilebileceğini. Evet, kitap bir yanıyla Peter Pan kadar büyülü ve çocuksuyken bir yanıyla Sineklerin Tanrısı kadar vahşi ve acımasız. Kitabı bu tuhaf karışımdan fazlası yapan ise Richard Hughes'un okuru hem alabildiğine çocukluğun bilinmeyen derinliklerine daldıran hem de belli mesafede tutan muhteşem tekniği. Bir çocuğun iç çalkantılarını, düşünce şeklini, bilişsel çarpıtmalarını, benmerkezciliğini, yeni yeni keşfettiği vicdanıyla hesaplaşmasını, savunma mekanizmalarını tüm açıklığıyla anlıyor, sınırlı bakış açımızlaysa sezdirilenleri keşfetmeye çalışıyoruz. Arka planda ise sömürgecilik ve Doris Lessing kitaplarından aşina olduğumuz sömürgelerdeki İngilizlerin muhtaçlığı ve sefaleti var. Çok başarılı bir roman. Bu zamana kadar okumadığıma üzüldüm açıkçası. Bunda denizde geçen, denizcilik terimleri içeren kitaplardan kaçmamın da payı var elbet. Neyse ki Jaguar sayesinde bu gözden kaçmış şaheseri okuyabildim. Teşekkürler Jaguar! 5/5

"Emily içinse vicdan çok farklı bir anlam taşıyordu. İçindeki o gizli değerin henüz tam olarak farkında değildi ama ondan korkuyordu. Rachel'in berrak önsezileri onda yoktu: İçindeki bu acımasız yaratığı (vicdanı) ne zaman farkında olmaksızın gücendirebileceğini asla bilmiyordu ve bir gün kabuğunu kırıp çıkmasına izin vereceği o küstah pençelerin tehdidi altında yaşıyordu. Onun gizli gücünün doğum öncesi uykusunda hareketlendiğini hissettiğinde aklını başka şeylere vermeye çalışıyor ve bu korkuyu kendi kendisinin bile hissetmesine izin vermiyordu, ama bir gün bir hareketiyle onu uyandıracağını yüreğinin derinliklerinde biliyordu; istemeden yapılacak korkunç bir şey onu öfkelendirip bir kasırga gibi ruhunu sarmasına neden olacaktı. Haftalarca mutlu bir bilinçsizlikle yaşayıp gidebilirdi, kendisinin Tanrı olduğunu anladığındaki gibi zihninden hayaller geçebilirdi ama aynı zamanda, ta içinde, hiçbir kuşkuya yer kalmaksızın lanetlenmiş olduğunu ve dünya kurulalı beri onun kadar kötü ruhlu birinin doğmadığını da biliyordu.

[Spencer Orey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dang those were some bloodthirsty kids. Hilarious, awful, poetic, and sometimes old school racist. Run away pirates, here come the terrifying children with some beautiful prose.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

So deliciously strange, I couldn't put it down. The prose is just fantastic.

[Emmeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

" When swimming under water, it is a very sobering thing suddenly to look a large octopus in the face."

A strange tale. I considered marking it down on this reread, as at times it didn't seem quite the marvel I remembered from ten years ago, and yet the ending floored me, again. This is a book whose genius is to be consistently be about something different than what it appears to be, and to do this while retaining an engaging, adventurous plot, an effortlessly ironic tone, and an ensemble cast of well-developed characters. The limited morality of pirates comes up against the amorality of children. The experience of growing up, from non-human babyhood to semi-human childhood to an adolescence that is godlike but very wicked is examined with cool remove. The last page gave me a creeping sense of horror that seemed unmerited by what actually occurred on it. A book to reread periodically.

[Duane Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly good novel, and well written, that sails quietly along without much notice or fanfare, like a ship at night. I use the nautical reference because most of this story is set on or close to the sea. But the story is about children, and how they think, and how they react to events and circumstances beyond their control. For me, there are subtle similarities to Lord of the Flies regarding the psychology of children when left to their own devices. It deserves it's place in the canon of 20th century literatue.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 5 out of 5]

 
A Subversive Masterpiece

[July, 2011] I have just begun reading New Yorker critic James Wood's wonderful handbook, How Fiction Works, and so am particularly attuned to questions of narrative voice: who is telling the story, with whose thoughts, and for what audience? A perfect focus for Richard Hughes' 1929 novel, a subversive masterpiece of apparently straightforward narrative used for disturbing ends.

Hughes writes like an adult telling stories to children. He is not a parent, but black-sheep Uncle Dickie with a deliciously cavalier attitude towards convention. The book begins with five English children leading a carefree life on a run-down plantation in mid-nineteenth-century Jamaica. Their parents having little time for them, they amuse themselves by such pursuits as catching small animals and swimming. Here is Emily, the eldest girl:

Once, when she was eight, Mrs. Thornton had thought she was too big to bathe naked any more. The only bathing-dress she could rig up was an old cotton night-gown. Emily jumped in as usual: first the balloons of air tipped her upside down, and then the wet cotton wrapped itself round her head and arms and nearly drowned her. After that, decency was let go hang again: it is hardly worth being drowned for—at least, it does not at first sight appear to be.

Decency go hang—how great for a child! You would not find such laissez-faire attitudes in genuine Victorian children's literature such as E. Nesbit's The Railway Children, and you certainly don't find it in C. S. Lewis' high-minded The Chronicles of Narnia a quarter century later. But what about that authorial aside, "at first sight"? A warning of more serious trespasses still to come?

Or consider this passage. The children, on a visit to a neighboring plantation, are swimming in a lagoon. It is heavy, close, and suddenly very still:

The water of the bay was as smooth and immovable as basalt, yet clear as the finest gin: albeit the swell muttered a mile away on the reef. The water within the pool itself could not reasonably be smoother. No sea-breeze thought of stirring. No bird trespassed on the inert air.

By giving nature a well-bred sense of decorum with his "reasonably," "thought," and "trespassed," Hughes is playing to the children—but the comparisons to basalt and gin are disconcertingly adult. The switches of voice, together with the brilliant description of the earthquake which follows, keep the reader off-balance for a page or two; but when it is over, he returns to Emily, surprised that her hosts take the Big Event as a matter of course:

How funny Creoles were! They didn't seem to realize the difference it made to a person's whole after-life to have been in an Earthquake.

Soon it will not be merely a matter of stylistic hints, though these have laid the groundwork. The story proceeds like a wonderful adventure. The children survive a hurricane, but are shipped off to England for safety. Their ship is captured by pirates and they remain on the pirate boat for several weeks, getting dirty as mudlarks, climbing the rigging, and making friends with the ship's menagerie, which at one point even includes a lion and a tiger. But animals from the beginning have been more than childhood playmates—more like predators and prey, and a primal image of an animality that the children themselves share. Not that Uncle Richard's child listeners would notice; he already has them in thrall. But imagine the shock in their bright eyes when he suddenly kills off one protagonist, involves another in homicide, and makes to drown a third. And any adults reading over his shoulder would certainly pick up on the burgeoning sexuality and loom of puberty just over the horizon. Not a story for children, after all.

The children turn out to be more feral than the basically benevolent pirates, but it is not evil coming out, so much as the inherent amorality of childhood, the darker side of innocence. I thought, of course, of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), but while Hughes' actual events are less horrific than Golding's, the implication of that horror is more pervasive. Golding wrote of the breakdown of boarding-school order into savage mob rule; Hughes' children are in their natural anarchic state to begin with and they keep a sort of innocence to the end. To some extent, Golding was writing a political novel in the shuddering transition from hot to cold war. Hughes would go on to write political fiction later, in his planned trilogy on the rise of the Second World War that began with The Fox in the Attic in 1961, but here he is doing something deeper; his battlefield is mapped by Freud and Jung. Yet he was subliminally aware of the currents of his time. I cannot do better than quote the ending of Francine Prose's fine introduction to the NYRB edition:

Published in 1929, just as history was preparing events that would forever revise the terms in which one could talk about innocence and evil, A High Wind in Jamaica is one of those prescient works of art that seems somehow to have caught (on the breeze, as it were) a warning scent of danger and blood—that is to say, of the future.

[Peter Boyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story begins on a Jamaican plantation at some point in the mid 19th century. The Bas-Thornton family live in a grand house on the island, which is levelled by a hurricane. The parents decide to send their children back to their original home in England. But their ship is seized by pirates not long after they have left. The orginal captain tells the parents that the kids have been murdered, but in truth, they have been adopted by their captors. A fondness grows between the crew and the children, even though they have to deal with sexual advances and other threatening situations. They discover that life sea is exciting and perilous, and they have no option but to accept it.

From what I can gather, this book was quite shocking when it was published back in 1927. I suppose the main theme is a loss of innocence, and many of the events on board the pirate ship are traumatic for the children to experience. It is said to be a big influence on Lord of the Flies, but I would consider the latter to have far more depth and nuance. I don't think this novel has aged very well (particularly some of the racist language), and even though it is short I was quite relieved to finish it.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

High Wind in Jamaica was first published in 1929 as The Innocent Voyage. It was Hughes’ first novel -- he was 29. As it turned out, Hughes was not a prolific writer and is often used as an example when discussing writer’s block. He would go on to write, prior to World War II, a good Conradian sea novel (In Hazard) and then, in 1960, the much later - and admired - Fox in the Attic. Hughes died in 1975. Fox was part of an intended Tolystoyan-like trilogy dealing with events leading up to World War II but, in the end, health problems and Hughes’ own glacier like writing speed (sometimes a few sentences a day) would sink the effort with the final -- and below par -- second entry (The Wooden Shepherd). Thus, Hughes’ reputation seemed headed to the minor writer ash heap. But, in 1999, Modern Library issued its list of the 100 best works of fiction for the past century and lodged in at number 71 was Hughes’ High Wind in Jamaica. As a result, a fine novel has now, to some extent, been resurrected.

The book opens on the island of Jamaica, in the early to mid-1800s, introducing readers to the Bas-Thornton children - in particular John and Emily. The setting is Edenic, with the children often going about naked -- being quite comfortable in having gone “native.” They spend their days swimming, climbing trees, and capturing animals. At one point -- morally telling -- the children muse over the fact that “jiggers” (maggots) are “not absolutely unpleasant” and there is now a “sort of thrill” rubbing the skin (like the natives) where their eggs are laid.

Early in the novel, the Bas-Thornton children go to spend a few days with the Fernandez children -- Margaret and Harry. It is during this stay the children witness the first of the two natural disasters that open the novel: an earthquake. Hughes’ particular genius is his ability to see --without sentiment - through the eyes of a child. His description of their reaction to the earthquake, in all its disorienting effects, rings true:

But as for Emily, it was too much. The earth quake went completely to her head. She began to dance, hopping laboriously from one foot onto another. John caught the infection. He turned head over heels on the damp sand, over and over in an elliptical course till before he knew it he was in the water, and so giddy as hardly to be able to tell up from down.

And so on - with Emily barking like a dog, and John swimming as if going to Cuba. The point here - and throughout the novel - is that from an adult point of view, children are mad. To maintain this psychological high-wire act must be very demanding for a writer. To succeed for the length of a novel is simply a tour-de-force - and Hughes does succeed.

The second and more serious disaster is a hurricane. As the hurricane gathers force, the children’s mother (in a surreal scene calling into question adult sanity) attempts to read Walter Scott poems aloud (one senses Hughes’ parodying the stiff upper lip image from days of Victorian literary yore) while all hell is breaking loose outside: natives struggling and drowning in the wind and rain, while the house is literally coming apart. Significantly, it’s during dinner that wild cats enter the house, chasing, and then killing the children’s cat Tabby. This event deeply impacts Emily and she grieves more for Tabby than she does for the various human deaths she encounters along the way. Death will, for her, always wear the face of her beloved cat.

For the parents this is the last straw - the house is in ruins and the countryside a wreck. They decide it’s time to ship the children back to England. Coming along with them -- for vague reasons -- are the Fernandez children: young Harry and Margaret, a 13-year old midget. They are taken on board the Clorinda and set to sea. Not long afterward, the ship is taken by pirates - in what has to be one of the more humorous waylayings in literature. The pirates are a sad-sack lot, led by Captain Jonson, a buccaneer in the last days of piracy, who was possibly a former clergyman. He takes the children on board and, for a while, they are accepted as novelties and mascots by the pirates. It is while ashore and disposing of their loot that the adventurous John is lost due to an accident. Violence and tragedy occur without warning in the novel. What’s interesting is how Hughes portrays the children’s reactions when violence occurs. In John’s case - his death is never spoken of. The children continue to play their games on board, but his presence (silently anguished over a bit by Emily) is quickly forgotten.

However, the ship is no Peter Pan adventure. There are real-life dangers on board. At one point, after drinking a great deal, the pirates come down into the children’s cabin. The captain is being encouraged by the pirates to apparently rape Emily. But, before anything happens, Emily ends the matter by taking a savage bite out of the captain’s thumb. Later, the captain seems troubled by his behavior - but there will be a complex back and forth between Emily and the captain for the remainder of the novel. It’s as if Emily dangles her awakening sexuality before the captain. More concretely, Margaret starts spending time with the pirates - implicitly suggesting her own sexual involvement with them. The pirates also start treating her with contempt.

Emily’s awakening to self involves several remarkable passages in the book. Hughes, as psychologist, takes center-stage:

And then an event did occur, to Emily, of considerable importance. She suddenly realized who she was.

There is little reason that one can see why it should not have happened to her five years earlier, or even five later; and none, why it should have come that particular afternoon.

She had been playing houses in a nook right in the bows, behind the windlass (on which she had hung a devil’s-claw as a door-knocker); and tiring of it was walking rather aimlessly aft, thinking vaguely about some bees and a fairy queen, when it suddenly flashed into her mind, she was she.

She stopped dead, and began looking over all of her person which came within the range of her eyes. She could not see much, except a fore-shortened view of the front of her frock, and her eyes when she lifted them for inspection; but it was enough for her to form a rough idea of the little body she suddenly realised to be hers.

She began to laugh, rather mockingly. “Well!” she thought, in effect: “Fancy you, of all people, going and getting caught like this! You can’t get out of it now, not for a very long time: you’ll have to go through with being a child, and growing up, and getting old, before you’ll be quit of this mad prank!”

But such examinations of character are not just limited to Emily, as Hughes explores Jonson, along with some of the smaller children, and the increasingly catatonic Margaret - who by novel’s end is being treated cruelly by the children. Jonson has his own dark side and so escapes being a lovable cutout, but succeeds in being very human. At one point we are told he can only draw things related to the ship -- and naked women from every angle. Thus, the reader is rightly troubled by Jonson’s attentions toward Emily. As departure for the children looms, Jonson asks Emily if she loves him. It isn’t an innocent question - though Jonson himself seems uncertain of his impulses toward prepubescent girls.

The voyage is a rambling one but, at one point, it is punctuated by the taking of another ship, and tragedy occurs when a captured man is killed - by Emily! At this point the children - in the eyes of the crew - are stripped of their charm. The superstitious sailors now start avoiding the children, and it isn’t long before they realize they’re being pursued. In order to get rid of some damaging evidence (the children), the captain eventually transfers them to a passing ship - though Jonson seems to be seriously considering doing away with them altogether but pulls back when his first mate, Otto, balks at the suggestion. Pirates they may be - but they are not killers, which sadly does them little good by novel’s end.

On the way back to England, Emily is visited by a young boy in her cabin. Wanting to be friends with the heroic little girl, he offers her the loan of his baby alligator for the evening. Delighted, Emily looks into the eyes of the creature. Here the reader senses that the heart of Hughes’ novel is not only about good and evil but the grey areas in between:

So this was an alligator! She was actually going to sleep with an alligator! She had thought that to anyone who had once been in an earthquake nothing really exciting could happen again: but then, she had not thought of this.

There was once a girl called Emily, who slept with an alligator...

In search of greater warmth, the creature high-stepped warily up the bed towards her face. About six inches away it paused, and they looked each other in the eye, those two children.

The eye of an alligator is large, protruding, and of a brilliant yellow, with a slit pupil like a cat’s. A cat’s eye, to the casual observer, is expressionless: though with attention one can distinguish in it many changes of emotion. But the eye of an alligator is infinitely more stony, and brilliant - reptilian.

What possible meaning could Emily find in such an eye? Yet she lay there, and stared and stared: and the alligator stared too. If there had been an observer it might have given him a shiver to see them so - well, eye to eye like that.

Most of us have encountered similar children in a somewhat more limited setting in Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The difference between the two novels lies in Hughes’ correct notion that when children are involved, fairy tales (or in this case, fairty tale like telling) can often be better at communicating their emotions of horror, wonder, danger, death, and awakening sexuality.

[Tony]

The high wind in Jamaica was a hurricane that destroyed the already decaying Bas-Thornton property. The close call causes the Bas-Thorntons to send their children back to Britain by merchant vessel. The ship is visited by pirates and before you can say Ahoy, Matey, the children and the pirates are off on an adventure.

A few bad things happen; more than that is imagined.

To make a simple thing of my reading of this book, the folks awaiting in Britain, including the Bas-Thorntons and the criminal justice system, misjudge the pirates.

One character, the ten year-old Emily, is skillfully drawn. The pirate captain, likewise, has our attention.

But I think this is ultimately a book about bias and prejudice with lessons aplenty for today.

[Rosana · Rating 5 out of 5]

We had a snow storm that lasted 36 hours or so. While the wind howled outside, I sat by the fireplace with this book all day yesterday. I grabbed it again this morning and, funny thing, the storm let down about the time I finished it this afternoon. Now I don’t know if the storm was so bad as I recall it, or it was this disturbing story that made everything look so dark and disquieting for the past 2 days.

First things first, this is not a children’s story. It is not a young-adult story either. It is a very adult and distressing tale, where children happen to be the main protagonists. Hughes genius shows in how well he captures these children’s voices, in special the voice of Emily.

The most delightful passage in this story is when suddenly Emily realizes her own existence. She ponders further that maybe she was herself God. My son, now entering teenage years, also tells about the moment he became aware of his own existence. He was more precocious than Emily, but he does not verbalize the experience as she does either. The point is, we all must at one time come to the same conscious realization, and later forget it. Hughes brings it back in a way that is tender, but also rings with truth.

Most passages though carry a darkness that cannot be erased very easily by Emily’s existential questionings. There is death, murder, rape, lies, jealousy in every page.

The setting also deserves a comment: although I don’t deny that this story may be historically accurate – I would not doubt that newly freed slaves would not kill their previous masters, be it by starvation or more deliberately feeding them ground glass. Piracy was also probably still very common in the middle of the 19th century. Hangings certainly were, and the inefficiency of the judicial system still is. Hughes’ Jamaica and later London are not the Jamaica and London of this realm, but one from a parallel world, barely more colourful than reality, yet different, more comic or caricature.

It just occurred to me that Hughes might have wanted to tell a more real vision of childhood as opposed to Peter Pan – another English story about pirates. I should search this before writing about it, but I won’t. I am ready to let go of this tale, as much as I am ready for the Sun to start shining outside. I am giving it 5 stars because I think it defies genre and time, but I don’t think I will re-read it any time soon. I can only take bleakness on small doses.

[Pınar · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" in a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates.
It is true they look human--but not so human, to be quiet fair, as many monkeys.
Subconsciously, too, everyone recognizes that they are animals--why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling a human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.
Possibly a case might be made that children are not human either: but I should not accept it. Agreed that their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in a kind of thinking (are mad, in fact): but one can, by an effort of will and imagination, think like a child, at least in a partial degree--and even if one's success is infinitesimal it invalidates the case: while one can no more think like a baby, in the smallest respect, than one can think like a bee.

Beginning this tale of adventure rising out of a tropical fever-dream, I somewhat baffled by Hughes' take on his child-cast, and by why exactly he wanted to write about them so oddly. But really, his portrayal is only odd by comparison to more usual treatments. Hughes actually understands exactly what children are like, and exactly how difficult they are to understand by normal adult interpretations. His entirely unsentimental portrayal is as brisk and funny as it is disconcerting, and both of these sides feel nothing but excruciatingly accurate. It's really quite remarkable that people can live with them around (children, that is). But then, perhaps the irrational and occult world of childhood has its benefits over a rationalized adult world that does such as this:

Trials are over quickly, once they begin. It was no time before the judge had condemned these prisoners to death and was trying someone else with the same concentrated, benevolent, individual attention.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the end of the first paragraph of the introduction by Francine Prose is Indeed it recalls much about childhood that we thought (or might have wished) we had forgotten, while it labors with sly intelligence to dismantle the moral constructs that our adult selves have so painstakingly assembled. No, it doesn't recall anything of my childhood, nor does it dismantle any moral constructs. I don't even know what she's talking about. I didn't read any more of the introduction because she started telling me what the story was about, rather than letting me read it, and I expected spoilers. Why do publishers allow this type of introduction?

Also, the one comment below is to keep an open mind. So I did, although I'm not sure what it is my mind was to be open to. Perhaps I was to recall the psychology of my childhood. Needless to say, I have very different feelings about this book as a whole than I was led to believe I might have. Even if I were a person who re-reads, this would never make such a list.

Had this not been the 5th book in a 10-book challenge, I probably would have abandoned it about 30% through (if I actually got that far before doing so). As it was, I pushed myself to completion, and that I could, I'll up my rating from 1-star to 2.

[Ben Ballin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, perceptive and often perfectly poised, this adventure has a great deal to say about children and their inner world, and does so with humour and elegance. The one false note to modern readers will be its superficial and sometimes stereotypical treatment of Black Jamaican characters, especially in the early chapters, which are set on the island.

[Biressten · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘...farkında olmadan yaşamlarındaki değişikliği kabullenmişlerdi. İnsanın, felaketin ne demek olduğunu anlaması için onu yaşaması gerekir.’

Bu ay #kitaptansöze kitap kulübümüzün iki kitabından biri Jamaika’da Bir Fırtına idi. Hem bu sebeple hem de canım @hulya nin hediyesi olduğu için ekstra keyifle okudum. Ayrıca geçen ay kulüp kitapları yetişmeyince bu ay okuma önceliği verdim kulüp kitaplarına. Genellikle çocukların üzerinden anlatılan kitapları keyifle okuyorum. Onların iç dünyalarını, masumiyetlerini ya da gelişimini okurken yakından tanımak çok büyük keyif veriyor. Bu kitabı okurken de aklıma çok defa Pal Sokağı Çocukları ve Sineklerin Tanrısı geldi. Konu bakımında farklı olsa da temel mesaj hep yakın oluyor çünkü. Kitapta bir grup çocuğun korsanlar arasında geçirdikleri fiziksel ve zihinsel süreç anlatılıyor. Çocukların masumluğu, korsanların kötülüğü simgelediği kitapta; her iki topluluğunda (özellikle çocukların) bazen sıra dışı, bazen tuhaf farklı birçok hale tanık oluyoruz. Okurken yer yer kızdığım, üzüldüğüm oldu. Ancak oldukça keyif aldığım bir okuma oldu. Yazarın anlatımını da hoş bulduğumu söyleyebilirim. 🍀

[Luxor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como ferviente admirador de ese gran cineasta casi olvidado que fue Alexander Mackendrick siempre he tenido la curiosidad por leer "Huracán en Jamaica", el libro en el que se basa una de sus mejores películas "Viento en las velas" (como se tituló en España). Mackendrick en múltiples entrevistas solía lamentar que no le permitieron hacer una adaptación mas fiel al del libro. Los productores temiendo las reacciones del publico ante temas algo escabrosos y delicados decidieron edulcorar determinadas partes de la historia.

Por otro lado no es de extrañar que Mackendrick pusiera tanto empeño en esta adaptación pues los temas que trata el libro no podían ser más afines a su obra, temas como el mundo de la infancia o el poder destructivo de la inocencia que ya había plasmado de forma magistral en películas como Mandy, El quinteto de la muerte o Sammy huida hacia el sur.

En cuanto a la obra literaria nos encontramos ante una autentica joya, por desgracia también algo olvidada como la obra del cineasta británico. Tras un huracán la familia Bas-Thornton decide enviar a sus hijos desde Jamaica a Londres donde pretenden darles una educación mas civilizada, pero en el trayecto el barco en el que viajan sufre un abordaje pirata durante el cual los niños acabarán como pasajeros del barco atacante.

Contado así puede parecer un simple libro juvenil de aventuras, pero la novela por suerte no se queda en la superficie. Richard Hughes se dedicará durante diez capítulos a diseccionar y bucear en la mente de esos niños hasta dejarnos boquiabiertos. Su actitud, su comportamiento, el más pequeño de sus pensamientos, la frialdad con la que reaccionarán ante determinados hechos...nada escapa a la pluma de Hughes mientras nos cuenta la fascinante relación amor-odio-miedo que es establece entre los piratas y los niños.

Huracán en Jamaica es desde ya uno de mis favoritos.