James

by Percival Everett

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.

So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all . . .

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Book Club, Audiobook, Historical, Literary Fiction, Race

305 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 2024

About the author

Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.

The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”

Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.

Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.

Reviews

[leynes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to write this review, even though it hurts. James was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024. You guys know I typically don't anticipate books at all. But this year both Danez Smith and Rémy Ngamije are blessing us with new books, so I actually took some time to look into other books that would be published this year. This is how I came to hear of James. Everyone and their mamma was raving about this new Huckleberry Finn retelling, how funny it is, how clever, how perfect. This book has an 4.65 (!!!!) average rating on Goodreads. In reviews, people act like Percival Everett is the second incarnation of Christ himself. To say that I was HYPED for this book is an understatement. I was so ready to love it!

Sure, I had some questions as to why Huckleberry Finn was chosen in the first place, as it's quite the progressive text, and despite its flaws, Jim is a well-fleshed out character, but I love seeing Black people thrive so I was more than willing to go on this ride. Turns out all of ya'll are liars, and this is actually not only one of the worst books I've ever read, it's also one of the most useless retellings. Jean Rhys is turning in her grave because she does not want to witness this. Anyways, to bring some order into this chaos, I actually decided to split this review into different sections and talk about what I liked (not much, welp) and what I didn't (brace yo'self).

Writing style
Let's start light because writing style is always hella subjective BUT I reaaaally didn't vibe with Everett's writing style. It is sooo straight-forward and simple, I cannot deal with it. James is a 300-page novel and I'm convinced I read it within 4-5 hours, and I am a very slow reader. It went by so quick??? And that's because 80% of this novel is dialogue. Everett doesn't know what descriptions are. You can flip to any random page and all you will see is dialogue. And I know some of you will actually like the book for it – and I respect that – but I want more pomp, more introspection, more landscape... just MORE.

I also really didn't think that this was funny. Sure, I laughed maybe 3 times, but overall, this is not written with aaaany humor. "The correct incorrect grammar" did nothing for me, Huck being unable to understand Jim when he spoke standard English did nothing for me... it really wasn't giving. They have this one stupid exchange: Huck: "Why are you talking like that?" Jim: "Are you referring to my diction or my content?" And I really just hate it, because NO ONE is talking like that. It's so over the top and silly.

And it's really such a shame because I LOVE the first sentence of this novel: "Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass." It's sooo good, and could've set the tone for an essential piece of rewriting... alas!

Characterisation
Whew, chile. This is the big one. The reason why I was interested in this retelling that James is supposed to be, is to get more insight into the characters we already know from Twain's novel; mainly, of course, James. The TITULAR character. Who is this man? What motivates him? What are his fears, his desires, his struggles? Why is he the way that he is? Percival Everett never manages to make him come off the page. At the end of this book I'm none the wiser. I don't know who this man is. At the beginning of the book (p. 35) there's this beautiful quote:

"I was as much scared as angry, but where does a slave put anger? We could be angry with one another; we were human. But the real source of our rage had to go without address, swallowed, repressed. They were going to rip my family apart and send me to New Orleans, where I would be even farther from freedom and would probably never see my family again."

Unfortunately, this is one of the only moments of introspection we get in this whole 300-page long novel. Everett never makes us feel Jim's fears or his anger. It's a damn shame. I didn't really care what was happening to him, and that's a feat in and of itself, because terrible fucking things were happening to him... I wasn't able to connect to any other characters either, welp.

What Everett does to his female characters is truly mind-boggling. None of them are well fleshed out. All (!) of them are used as devices to fuel Jim's story along. I'm truly baffled that very few reviewers seem to have a problem with that. Let's start with Jim's wife Sadie and his daughter Elizabeth. We as readers never get to know them. All we're supposed to know about them is that Jim loves them and wants to reunite with them. They are simply used as a motivation for Jim to run away and his desire to free them. We never explore their relationship and bond. Especially with a reveal that comes later in the book (I'll talk about it in the last section of this review due to spoilers), I felt like we really needed to explore his marriage better... because WTF? What did Sadie say to all of this? When and how did she and Jim get together?

But most appalling are Everett's use of Sammy and Katie. Sammy is a young Black woman that Jim and Norman free during one of their stops. Sammy reveals to them that she was repeatedly raped by her white overseer since she was a child. Something that is just so so horrible and it actually made me close the book for a second because I really struggle with reading about such heavy topics. But instead of giving Sammy's characters any purpose, Everett has her shot 10 pages later during their flight, only for Jim and Norman to have a conversation about freedom, with Jim spewing the bullshit that at least now she "died free". Excuse me? That death is the best she could've hoped for? Fuck that!

I felt a similar rage when Everett introduces the character of Katie, only for Jim to witness her being raped by the white overseer Mister Hopkins. That made me so damn mad. First of all, why did you have to describe her rape in detail on the page?? Just exploitative and unnecessary. And why don't you give this woman any thoughts, any story beyond this? I kid you not, she is simply introduced to be raped, so that Jim can muster up the courage/find the rage to murder Hopkins afterwards. It is so uncomfortable.

Plot/Narrative devices
The plot was pretty cheap with Jim going from A to B to C, always encountering shitty people along the way, but I guess the original wasn't much more original in that regard either. So whilst the plot wasn't engaging for me, the thing that really didn't work for me were the narrative devices that Everett was using. I just didn't like them. I didn't like Jim's dream-conversations with the philosophers. I get they were there to show the hypocrisy in philosophical thought but they were NOT funny, and there were decidedly too many of them. I didn't like that the big reveal (of how Jim and Huck are linked) came so late in the book, it should've been revealed way earlier in order for Everett to explore it further. I also really didn't like the pacing and felt like the truly exciting stuff happened during the last 20 pages when Jim finally got to the plantation where his wife and daughter were enslaved. I really liked that bit.

Purpose/Intention
I'm just really confused by Everett's intention. What was the purpose of writing this novel? Parts of it are supposed to be realistic (historical fiction) but then there are other parts that are so fucking unrealistic, but Everett never truly leans into magical realism/fantasy. I feel like he truly missed the mark. In regards to the ending, I love that Jim became an avenger, or how he said it: "I am the angel of death, come to offer sweet justice in the night. I am a sign. I am your future. I am James."

I'm sure it's not just me but I find novels/fiction set during the time of enslavement to be really hard to stomach. I can watch documentaries all the time and am willing to learn and educate myself, but fiction can quickly feel exploitative. That's why I love authors who are willing to take a risk and shake things up a bit. A perfect example would be Wayétu Moore's She Would Be King. The novel reimagines the foundation of Liberia, but instead of solely focusing on the horrors and the plight of Black people, Wayétu gives some of her Black characters special powers, like superhuman strength or invisibility, which empowers them (and the reader), and makes reading the story bearable and triumphant. Everett tries the same with the ending, with pistol-swinging James freeing all the slaves from the plantation, and I loved that bit (as unrealistic as it was, that's the kinda shit I wanna see!!!), but it feels lacklustre because the rest of the story is not that. It almost comes out of nowhere.

In terms of purpose, I also feel like James adds almost nothing of substance to Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The only thing (SPOILER INCOMING) is the reveal that Huck is Jim's son. There are parts of that that I like (first and foremost, it explains why this Black enslaved man takes so many risks/sacrifices so much for this random "white" boy in Twain's novel) but there are more parts that I don't like (Why wasn't colorism explored then? Why did we never get a look at Jim's relationship to Huck's mom? WHO WAS THIS WOMAN? I desperately need to know, but Everett never answers these questions...). It was just really poorly done.

You guys know how much I love books written in the literary tradition of writing back. Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and Daoud's Meursault, contre-enquête add so much to their source materials (Jane Eyre and L'Étranger respectively). They take characters that are on the fringes of these narratives and finally give them a voice. I don't feel like Everett's James is much louder than Twain's Jim, or more human than him. Not that much was added to his character. Reading this actually has me convinced that we need a feminist retelling for Huck's mom. Ahhhh.

Anyways, I ordered another retelling last week – The Silence of the Girls – let's hope it's better than this.

[Nataliya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am very cautious with book reimaginings since, honestly, most of the time they are quite unneeded — but here the idea of it indeed seemed necessary. I understand why Jim of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn needed his own story not filtered through the perspective of a young white kid raised in the world of racism - even if that boy slowly learns to see Jim as a human being and not just property.

Jim of Mark Twain’s story was simple and ignorant and superstitious, in the end becoming something between a cruel plaything for Tom Sawyer and life lesson material for Huck Finn — and yet there were also glimpses of a genuinely kind man, a husband and a father, and a man existing outside the limited worldview of a barely adolescent boy. With James Everett sets out to give this man a voice and selfhood he deserves, and he takes a no-holds-barred approach to it. Everett’s James is an erudite and educated man who has read Voltaire and has dream arguments with John Locke. He is a man who teaches small children to effortlessly code-switch to the extreme as a life-saving technique.

“I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.”

And yet it kept me at a distance. I can only conclude that Everett’s style just doesn’t work for me.

Retellings to me are tricky beasts. I hope for them to do something new and fresh, maybe with a peripheral character, to approach everything from a new angle. But here I got a whiplash. For almost half of the story we were diligently retreading the familiar Twain territory, but still with no insights into things that even in the original were a bit odd and baffling — not to mention that you needed to already know Huck/Jim story for the background as this book can’t quite stand on its own. And then suddenly it starkly diverges from Twain (although thanks to Everett for throwing out the atrocious part on the Phelps farm), but that divergence doesn’t help much, with plot developments that left me even more baffled than King/Duke farce (Norman and his fate? Huck’s origins? Huh? What’s the point?)

Maybe it’s the overload of satire that kept me at the arm’s length (or at least I sincerely hope I read that right as a satire). We went from one extreme to another - from Twain’s Jim being simple and childlike to Everett’s James being a sarcastic Voltaire-conversing erudite. I guess I was hoping for Jim/James to be explored more as a person not extreme but a regular guy - a father, a husband, a friend - with no exaggerations needed to show his actual humanity and not a caricature or a statement and a channel for angry satire.

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

And no, I wasn’t a fan of how Everett chose to portray the bond between James and Huck. I get that he wanted James’ growing love for the boy to be different than the implied servile devotion one may see in Twain’s book — but to me it cheapens James’s character and motivations. I get the “why”, I am just disappointed with “what” and “how”. It was unnnecessary.

It is a devastatingly dark read - don’t be fooled by “ferociously funny” misleading nonsense in the book blurb. Twain had levity; Everett quickly lets go of that after a few pages and makes the tone grim, appropriate to the book on horrors of slavery from the viewpoint of a person who’s seen by the society as an expendable inhumane thing. I appreciated the somber feel as atrocities do not need sugarcoating, but the rest just did not work for me - even if the ending went all unexpected Hollywood blockbuster in a bit of a tonal change And since it’s the second Everett in a row where I just don’t feel it, maybe his books are just not for me (but based on all the other reviews, I’m in minority here, so take it with a grain of salt).

2.5 stars.
————

Buddy read with Nastya.

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Also posted on my blog.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa, that was so not was I was expecting. Despite the Goodreads blurb that calls this book “ferociously funny” and “brimming with electrifying humor,” I didn't really find much to laugh about while reading it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I was just surprised by how serious and thought-provoking this novel ended up being. I mean, sure, there are a few funny bits here and there, but I definitely wouldn't consider this to be a humorous book overall.

But, with that said, James is a brilliant piece of fiction and I have once again been wowed by Percival Everett's talent. (As an aside, if you want to read a truly funny book by Everett, grab yourself a copy of The Trees. It's amazing.) Everett manages to stay true to the tone and style of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn while at the same time creating something completely different with runaway slave Jim as the narrator.

This is not an easy book to read … well, subject-wise, anyway. Lots of terrible things happen to good people, mostly just because of the color of their skin. There are awful characters who degrade and take advantage of Jim just because they can. There is murder and rape and violence and death. I've read books about slavery before, but somehow this one brought home the inhumanity of it like no other. I foresee lots of challenges to this book by the “slavery wasn't really all that bad,” red hat-wearing, book-burning crowd.

I flew through this book and found it basically unputdownable. I read the first 80% in one sitting, forced myself to go to bed around 3 a.m., and then finished the last bit first thing the next morning. It's exciting and suspenseful and heart-wrenching all at the same time, and the ending was fantastic.

If you enjoyed the original Huck Finn, you'll probably love this version at least as much, if not more. Percival Everett is an incredibly talented author and a national treasure, and this latest book of his deserves all of the praise and recognition that will undoubtedly come its way.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review.

[Rick Riordan]

A brilliant read! Everett takes the story of Huckleberry Finn and flips it on its head, making the enslaved man Jim the narrator, although Jim thinks of himself as James, and has a rich interior life to which his white enslavers are completely oblivious.

We follow James and Huck on the same adventure Mark Twain outlines in his seminal novel Huckleberry Finn, but we see the action from James' point of view, which changes everything, and whenever the two main characters are separated, we follow James on his own adventures, rather than staying with Huck. This is only a structural comparison, but it reminded me somewhat of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, in that we experience a well-known text (Hamlet) from a completely different and undervalued point of view. Seeing James' journey through the Antebellum South makes the story even more horrifying and visceral, though Everett loses none of the sardonic humor and picaresque character work that made Twain's original text so memorable.

One of my favorite things about the novel is Everett's depiction of how James and his fellow enslaved Blacks talk. They are self-educated. James has secretly learned to read and write, sneaking books from Judge Thatcher's library whenever he can. He and his family speak better English than their enslavers, but they hide their skills whenever whites are around, talking instead in an exaggerated 'slave dialect' so that the whites will not feel threatened, which the enslaved feel is the best way they can stay safe. 'Jim' is a persona, therefore, a mask that James puts on so he can navigate the impossible world he was born into. This idea itself -- of masks and false identities -- is very much in the spirit of Twain's work, and I have to believe Twain himself would have chuckled approvingly if he'd gotten the chance to read this excellent text.

Everett does a wonderful job breathing new life into the story, but is not afraid to take liberties with it as well. Some of his reveals, the twists and secrets he adds, make such perfect sense I found myself thinking, "Oh, THAT's why those two characters interacted as they did!" or "Ah, now I finally understand why Jim/James made that choice in the original novel!" One thing is for certain, after reading James you will never see the character, or Huckleberry Finn, the same way again. Everett has made it newly relevant, charged with honesty and raw emotions, for the 21st century.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

the library hold i've had on this book for 6 weeks coming in the same week it wins the national book award...i feel so alive.

even better: the award was deserved.

i've been seeing some negativity around this book lately. maybe backlash that it's been nominated for and/or won what feels like every award you've ever heard of and a few made-up sounding ones. maybe the innate human desire for an unpopular opinion (been there). or maybe the boldness of an author daring to retell a Great American Novel (read: a worse version of tom sawyer that bravely and half-heartedly takes on slavery 20 years after the emancipation proclamation).

i don't know what it is, because i think the hype is deserved.

i'm no huck finn fan, if you couldn't tell, and a percival everett retelling felt like exactly what that book needed.

it chillingly reconstructs the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery, using strategies ranging from excellent character construction to literary devices to style to basic empathy. it manages to use the framework of huck finn to build itself up, and to drift away from it when it would hold it back without detracting from its core concept. 

in fact, most of the ways it's limited (abrupt ending, overloaded beginning, overlong middle) feel like mark twain's fault. 

bottom line: call me a hater, but i really liked this book.

[Brady Lockerby · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book made me feel every human emotion possible in a span of ~300 pages - anger, heartbreak, unease, but overall pride. i never read Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn growing up so i just did cliff notes of both of them before starting this (i know i know dont yell at me.) but yeah, i loved this. the ending!! so good

[Traci Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 10/10 no notes book. Holy shit. This is a masterpiece and the reason that classic retellings exists. It is subversive, smart, daring, and supremely executed. This is a fucking book!

[Emily May · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am surprised at how highly rated this book is. Not that I can see no reason why readers might like it— I can —but it does not come across as a crowd-pleaser. Had I read this book before it became a hit, I would have expected it to be divisive.

The reason being that it's hard to explain or categorise this story. It is a very strange literary book, built of components— some I liked, a lot I didn’t— that didn’t really add up to a cohesive whole.

Is it a satire? It seems it must be because some parts are obviously intended to be funny. Humour is highly-subjective and, I have to admit, most of this wasn't my particular flavour. Very over-the-top goofy humour at times. The story reimagines Mark Twain's Jim-- a character who is treated as benign and a bit simple-minded --as a secret intellectual who can not only read, but is well-versed in Voltaire. In this version, the way Black slaves behave and speak is not their true selves but a performance for slave owners.

I tried my best to get on board with this, because there is something quite amusing and satisfying about an author taking the way slavers belittled, stereotyped and made jokes about slaves, and being like ha, joke's on you.

But, then, other parts are aggressively unfunny. Floggings, lynchings and an on-page rape. I remember thinking at one point: Is this the point? Is Everett just that clever? Was he waiting for the reader to have the audacity to laugh before screaming “Oh so you think this shit is funny, do you?! Well, here’s a woman being raped.”? I just don’t know.

And, by the way, I do not think every book needs to have central female characters, but I do think you have a responsibility not to introduce female characters for the sole purpose of them being rape victims. Especially when there are already almost no women of note in the book.

I found the decisions Everett made here curious… he rewrites a character who I agree needed rewriting, but I expected a complex character, someone with depth of characterisation… it is strange to me, and a bit farcical, that Everett replaces the stereotyped, one-dimensional Jim we know with another surface level character whose entire personality seems to be "secret genius." Everett's Jim plays a rough-talking halfwit to his white overlords but secretly has dream conversations with Voltaire and Locke. Other than this satirical twist that actually Jim was a genius, I didn’t feel we knew him at all.

And: “Are you referring to my diction or my content?” is a line a robot would say, not a closeted intellectual.

Then there's the plot itself, the style of which is very much just the characters running from one place and drama to the next. It reads like a series of sketches, some comedic, some horrific, with a twist that I am still undecided about. Knowledge of the characters and general story in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is pretty much necessary for the book's events to have significance.

So, again, I'm surprised this book has been as universally-loved as it seems to have been. A rating above 4.5 at more than 200,000 ratings is impressive, so I guess I'm the problem.

[Adina ( back from Vacay…slowly recovering) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update March 2025: Shortlisted for Dublin Literary Award 2025

Update: Winner of the National Book Ward for fiction 2024

Now shortlisted for Booker Prize 2024

I discovered Percival Everett two years ago, when he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for The Trees. I gave that book 5* and it ended up as one of my favorite books of 2022. Meanwhile, I read Dr. No which I liked but was not impressed by it. James was excellent but my enjoyment of it was less than of The Trees. Everett writes satire like a pro and that is what I loved about The Trees. I laughed out loud many times, all the while I was deeply moved by the subject the author chose: the lynching of black people. In James, there is less humor, it is still there but lot more subtle. The author chose slavery as his main subject in James and probably that is why he took things more seriously.

James is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, written from Jim’s point of view. Jim is a slave who runs away when he finds out he is going to be sold and separated from his family. The plan is to somehow get himself free and then find enough money to also free his wife and daughters. He teams up with Huck, who stages his own death to get away from his violent father. All kinds of adventures and mishaps follow. James follows the plot of the original novel quite well until it diverges in some vital points. I will not spoil them for you, I will only say that James is more violent, or at least that is what I’ve been told. You see, I haven’t read Huckleberry Finn and I chose to peruse a summary of the plot instead. I tried and failed twice to read Mark Twain in childhood and I did not feel the urge for one more attempt. After finishing James, I believe I probably made a mistake. I probably would have appreciated this novel a lot more, have I gone through its inspiration first. Maybe that is why I am not giving this book 5*, maybe I missed some overtones, some references to the original material which would have elevated my experience. Nevertheless, I hope this book will reach the shortlist and I would not be sorry if it won. The author should finally receive the recognition he disserves.

[Nilufer Ozmekik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Percival Everett's James is a transformative reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but this time, Huck is merely a supporting character to Jim—now James—a man whose journey to freedom becomes the heart and soul of this gripping novel. This isn't just a retelling; it's a ferocious critique of racism, slavery, and systemic inequality, delivered through dark humor, biting satire, and moments of profound emotion. The novel dismantles the simplistic portrayal of Jim in Twain’s original, replacing it with a complex, resilient figure who reclaims his own story.

James is not the passive character from the original story. He’s observant, sharp-witted, and even philosophical. He debates with famous thinkers in his delirium, as he edges closer to death. These are not merely flights of fancy; they reflect his awareness of the absurdity and cruelty of the world in which he lives. James knows that he is seen as nothing more than property, and rather than resign himself to that fate, he chooses to risk everything for a life of freedom, even if it means facing danger at every turn.

The novel begins when James learns he’s about to be sold, which would separate him from his wife and daughter. With a bold determination, he runs, hoping to earn enough money to buy his family’s freedom. His path crosses with Huck Finn, who has also run away from an abusive father. Together, they embark on a perilous journey down the Mississippi River. But what is an adventure for Huck is a desperate bid for survival for James.

Everett doesn’t sugarcoat the brutality of slavery, and while Huck remains oblivious to much of James’ suffering, their relationship is fraught with tension and unexpected moments of connection. As James navigates encounters with bandits, con artists, and white men who paint their faces black for minstrel shows, the novel builds a world that feels both real and nightmarish, where danger lurks at every bend in the river.

Yet, amidst the darkness, James remains determined to reclaim his story. As he says in his own words:

“My NAME IS JAMES. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry. I was sold when I was born and then sold again. ... I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.”

Everett gives us a novel that transcends the boundaries of the original tale. James is no longer just a symbol of slavery’s brutality—he’s a man with agency, intellect, and an unyielding determination to protect his family and reclaim his humanity.

James is not only a profound retelling but a far-reaching commentary on race, freedom, and the enduring impact of slavery. With vivid characterization, harrowing depictions of survival, and a narrative that resonates with historical and contemporary truths, this book is one of the year’s best. It challenges readers to see the world through James' eyes, offering a powerful meditation on the price of freedom and the strength of the human spirit. Highly recommended for those ready to revisit a classic story with fresh eyes and a new heart.

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[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

** WINNER of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
WINNER of the 2024 National Book Award! **

‘With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.’

In his novel Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway declared that ‘all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.’ A classic from the 1880s that has embedded itself in the American literary canon, we now find in 2024 that another great work of modern American literature has arrived that, in keeping with Hemingway’s pronouncement, stems from Twain’s novel. Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction, Percival Everett’s James is a fresh reimagining of a familiar tale as Everett gives voice to Jim who, fleeing slavery, has taken off down the Mississippi River along with Huck. Told from James’ perspective—mostly only white people refer to him as “Jim”—Everett deftly captures the style and tone of Twain’s classic while simultaneously subverting its cultural impact, maintaining the hijinks and capers while revealing James to be highly educated and pulling the strings behind the scenes as James pursues deeper literary investigations. Literary and widely accessible, James quickly pulls the reader through thought-provoking investigation into identity, the impact of slavery, and language itself, Everett’s James becomes more than a twist on a classic and delivers its own wit and power.

‘My interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.’

‘Probably the most subversive thing we can do in any culture, in any society, is read, which is why fascists always want to burn books,’ Percival Everett said in an interview for Goodreads, ‘the second most subversive thing we can do is write. And write truthfully.’ The power of reading and writing is alive in James where we discover the Jim from Twain’s original novel to be much more than meets the eye. Under Twain, author Toni Morrison wrote in an essay that Twain gives an ‘over-the-top minstelization of Jim,’ and while she concedes this was ‘predictable and common’ or the era, ‘nevertheless, Jim’s portrait seems unaccountably excessive and glaring it its contradictions—like an ill-made clown suit that cannot hide the man within.’ I recalled this image in a scene where James, forced into a minstrel show, is made to appear in blackface but in a way that makes the audience perceive him as a white man with his face painted (‘me, a light-brown Black man painted black in such a way as to appear like a white man trying to pass for Black’). Under Everett, we discover that James is educated and has not only read the books he claims he isn’t taking but is using them to teach his family and the other slaves as well.

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote that ‘once you learn to read, you will be forever free,’ firmly believing literacy was a key to knowledge and freedom. He disccuses at length in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass about learning to read and write and teaching it to fellow slaves, believing that education was incompatible with slavery and that by freeing their minds the freedom of their bodies would be able to follow. So too does James believe. Everett, known for wordplay, creates a rather fascinating dynamic with language and what James calls the ‘slave filter’ in which the Black characters of the novel switch into when they are aware white people are around. James, who excels at giving ‘white people what they want,’ notes that this gives them a smokescreen to hide their education and intentions if the white people view them as ignorant and harmless.

'White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them…The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us.’

He teaches lessons in how to hide behind language, the sort of broken language Jim speaks in Twain’s original now viewed as an act of subversion against their white oppressors as well as an act of self-preservation:

The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.”
“February, translate that.”
“Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.”
“Nice.”

Much of the novel concerns James’ attempts to conceal his education. This is more humorous and playful at first, such as an early scene where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn steal his hat. In Twain we have him convinced he was bamboozled by witches, though here he plays along with the game because he knows his role is ‘either a villain or prey, but certainly their toy,’ but also he has taken a bit of a liking to Huck who he pitties for the abuse brought down upon him by his alcoholic father. As the novel progresses, however, his education frequently begins to slip out. Especially around Huck and this only adds to the dangers James is facing.

‘I had wondered every time I sneaked in there what white people would do to a slave who had learned how to read. What would they do to a slave who had taught the other slaves to read?’

It is certainly an indictment of the culture that the pursuit of education was denied to Black people and used as a method of control and subordination. It is, in fact, the ability to feel a sense of control that first encourages James to pursue the act of reading and writing. ‘ If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them,’ he tells the reader, ‘they couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them.’ While with Huck we witness him being the brains behind many of the familiar hijinks of the original novel, when it comes to other white people there is a larger element of danger, though he is often not found out until it is too late and suddenly James is the one holding a gun with control of the room.

‘I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.’

While occasionally the wordplay seems to take so much of the focus that there isn’t much to the characters beyond, moments such as these are when James is at its best and we see the cultural sense of superiority being the undoing of the white oppressors. I also particularly enjoyed the moments where James confronts others of the white literary canon, such as Voltaire and John Locke, in order to show how even those thought progressive at their time harbored rather racist lines of thinking and upheld a white cultural hegemony. ‘Folks be funny like that,’ James says, ‘they take the lies they want, and throws away the truths that scares them,’ and much of the novel forces the reader to confront the horrific legacy of slavery and racism even in the stories of authors like Mark Twain that tend to be thought of as the less problematic of their times.

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

Slavery is at the center of this work and Everett crafts James as a vessel to not only force the reader to reckon with it but also as a figure that shows the perils of attempting to subvert it. James is on the run when he learns he will be sold off and does not want to leave his family, but his predicaments only worsen when he worries he will be blamed for the murder of Tom, or the dead man on the houseboat or simply executed for having run away. James shows us the fears and feelings of hopelessness when there is nowhere to turn and the law will always side against you and how there isn’t even an outlet for this rage and fear.

‘I was as much scared as angry, but where does a slave put anger? We could be angry with one another; we were human. But the real source of our rage had to go without address, swallowed, repressed. They were going to rip my family apart and send me to New Orleans, where I would be even farther from freedom and would probably never see my family again.’

There is a real human tragedy come alive on the page in this novel and Everett does well to recenter the pain and suffering even while keeping most of the more misadventure narrative of Twain’s work. The plots to differ but it would seem beside the point to really take that as a criticism.

‘Which would frighten you more? A slave who is crazy or a slave who is sane and sees you clearly?’

In James we see how this anger had to stay muted and how that pain would reverberate for generations and why concepts like code-switching occur or why tone-policing is such a harmful act particularly as it is most often directed at Black or women activists as a way to silence them for making the white patriarchal society feel uncomfortable. And in this way, James is a great success. A fascinating reworking of the original in a way that makes this Everett’s own and a novel worthy of its accolades, I quite enjoyed James and I cannot wait to read more Percival Everett.

4.5/5

‘I could always run. But running and escaping were not the same thing…As it stood, I had no plan, but it was clear that I needed one. I had to ask myself and answer honestly, How much do I want to be free? And I couldn’t lose sight of my goal of freeing my family. What would freedom be without them?’

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Are you insane?”
“No. However, I did get the idea from an insane person.”

James is a fictional story that imagines a character from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The main character, James, is a slave on the run after he discovers that his family is to be sold.

The short chapters, effective use of dialogue, and surprising reveals keep the pages flying faster than a steamboat. Everett is clearly a veteran storyteller with this mesmerizing work showing the skill of a seasoned professional. In addition to the reimagining aspect, interwoven into the story is a creative take on the Identity Plot. Throughout the book, James wrestles with his name and his identity, and he struggles to make split-second impossible decisions which only add to the heartbreaking realness of the work.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $36.00 a signed copy from The Mark Twain Store
Audiobook – 1 Audible Credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or roughly $9.56 per credit)

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[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction*

*Winner of the 2024 National Book Award*

*Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize*

“With my pencil I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.”

When James (“Jim”), an enslaved man, hears that he is to be separated from his family and sold to a man from New Orleans, he runs away, intending to find a way to secure freedom for himself and his family. He is joined by young Huckleberry Finn, who is running from his abusive father. James is aware of Huck’s plight and is protective of him. The narrative is shared from James’s first-person PoV as he embarks on a life-altering journey.

James by Percival Everett has essentially been described as a reimagining of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In my humble opinion, Percival Everett’s masterpiece is much more than that. The first segment of this novel explores familiar territory from within the framework of the classic that inspired this novel, but presenting the story from James’s PoV adds much depth and perspective to the story many of us have enjoyed over the years. James’s perspective adds a dimension of maturity and a more somber tone to what many of us consider a childhood classic.

“Waiting is a big part of a slave’s life, waiting and waiting to wait some more. Waiting for demands. Waiting for food. Waiting for the end of days. Waiting for the just and deserved Christian reward at the end of it all.”

Frankly, I thought the lighter moments described in this novel were less humorous (the satirical element and the irony evoke amusement) and more thought-provoking. The author never resorts to embellishments, even in the most intense moments. James’s approach to life as an enslaved man compelled to suppress his true self, sharing his wisdom on how to survive and navigate through a world that has mostly been cruel to him and his fellow men, is expressed eloquently but often in a reserved tone.

“White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them..”

As the narrative progresses, the author takes a detour from his source material and assumes ownership of James’s narrative, presenting our protagonist as a brave, perceptive and wise, self-taught learned person with compassion for his fellow beings. He holds no illusions about the consequences of his actions, fully aware that if caught his fate would differ from that of his fellow runaway Huck. His musings on slavery, racism, religion, the human condition and humanity in general are expressed through his imagined conversations with characters whose works he has been reading in secret.

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

James’s journey is not an easy one and the author does not try to paint it as such. Each of James’s experiences, the consequences of the choices he makes along the and the people he meets (slavers, tricksters, liars and fellow enslaved men and women who have experienced unimaginable cruelty at the hands of their masters) contribute to his understanding of the world around him and the perils he will inevitably face on the road he has chosen to travel. His companion Huck is often unable to comprehend the dangers James could potentially face , often puzzled by what he assumes is James’ uncharacteristic behavior, leading to many meaningful, heartfelt conversations between the two. Needless to say, some scenes are difficult to read, which is to be expected given the subject matter. Set in the years leading up to the Civil War, James is aware of the growing tensions over the issue of slavery but what does this mean for James and his quest for freedom? Will he be able to protect his family from a fate decided for them by those whose intentions and actions are driven by self-interest and utter disregard for human life? Everett tells a story that will stay with you long after you have finished this novel with a surprise revelation toward the end that will change the way you think about the characters and the books that inspired this one.

Heart-wrenching, brutally honest, yet brilliantly crafted and immersive with superb characterization and emotional depth, James by Percival Everett is a memorable read. This novel is surely going on my list of favorite reads of 2024. I read an ARC of this novel and promptly ordered a finished copy for my personal collection.

After the novel was published, I also listened to the audiobook narrated by Dominic Hoffman who has done a remarkable job of breathing life into the characters and this story. All the stars for the audio narration!

This is my third time reading Percival Everett, after The Trees and Dr. No , and I’m glad to say that with James, he does not disappoint!

Many thanks to Doubleday Books for the gifted ARC. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. James was published on March 19, 2024.

Note: I would suggest reading/revisiting the events described in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before picking up this novel to better appreciate Percival Everett’s creativity and brilliance in crafting James.

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[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE: JAMES HAS WON THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION!
CONGRATULATIONS PERCIVAL EVERETT!

‘But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.’

James by Percival Everett is a literary gem that takes readers on a thought provoking journey through the life of its protagonist, Jim. Everett’s writing is sharp, witty, and deeply engaging, making it easy to get lost in the layers of meaning he weaves into the narrative.

James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but told from the perspective of Huckleberry's friend Jim, an escaped slave. Set against the backdrop of the American South in the late nineteenth century around the time of the Civil War. The narrative explores themes of memory, identity, race, and the complexities of human relationships with a refreshing honesty and a touch of humour.

Everett's ability to blend heartfelt insights with entertaining storytelling is what makes this book a standout. The characters are vividly drawn and relatable, and you can’t help but become invested in their lives. Everett's prose is both lyrical and accessible, making it a pleasure to read from start to finish.

James is a stunningly written thought provoking novel that showcases Percival Everett’s incredible talent.

My Highest Recommendation.

‘With this pencil I write myself into being.’

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I left my family and slipped into the woods. It was perhaps stupid to attempt escape during the light of day, but I didn’t know when they might come for me. I didn’t run. Running was something a slave could never do, unless, of course, he was running. No one noticed as I passed through the Widow Douglas’s backyard and down the steep hill to the river. I waited there against an undercut bank. I couldn’t venture into the water during the day. Too many ferries and riverboats and folks fishing along the shore. I was as much scared as angry, but where does a slave put anger? We could be angry with one another; we were human. But the real source of our rage had to go without address, swallowed, repressed…”
- Percival Everett, James: A Novel

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ranks among the greatest of American novels. It is an indirect attack on race-based slavery cleverly packaged as a young boy’s tale of adventure on the Mississippi River. Its lessons are delivered subtly, through the mechanism of humor.

For all its merits, though, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has legions of naysayers. Many of the critiques are so nakedly partisan they cancel each other out. With that said, one of the more legitimate complaints concerns the character of Jim, the runaway slave putatively at the center of the story.

Given its narrative shape – told through the eyes of a young white boy – Jim is at best enigmatic, and at worse a collection of slave-era stereotypes: credulous, superstitious, pandering. To be fair, Twain gives us glimpses of Jim’s essential humanity and native intelligence – he famously out-logics Huck in their argument about why Frenchmen don’t talk like men – but even the book’s most ardent supporters would be hard-pressed to argue that Jim has much agency. He is acted upon, rather than getting to act. His feelings, especially regarding the late-stage foolishness accompanying the arrival of Tom Sawyer, are never explored.

In James, Percival Everett begins with a proposition ingenious in its simplicity: retelling Twain’s classic from the perspective of the man at the center of it all. That simplicity is a guise. In Conrad-like fashion, things become ever more complicated as Jim/James and Huck float down the river. Whatever else can said – and there is much to say – it will certainly get you thinking.

***

James belongs to a specific subgenre of literary works that take place within a setting established by a previous author. Like Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone and Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, it sets out to revise a firmly imbedded bit of American popular culture by viewing it through different eyes. In a way, it’s professional fan fiction, albeit with the aim of interrogating the source material, rather than simply celebrating it.

In the early going, James is about what I expected, and as good as advertised. It faithfully follows the plot-points of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, either adding a twist to scenes that already existed, or filling in the gaps when Huck and Jim are separated. Having read Twain’s work immediately before starting James, it was thrilling to see Everett’s interpretation, and to ponder the changes he made. On a number of occasions, I found myself looking at the old with new appreciation, and realizing I’d never think of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in quite the same way.

***

The thing about James, however, is that Everett’s ambitions go far beyond filtering Mark Twain’s landmark through a modernized sensibility. Even early on, there are hints that he is primed to follow a different path than the one forged by the original Jim and Huck. For instance, Everett quickly introduces the idea code-switching, in which Jim – and other enslaved persons – change their language patterns when speaking to each other versus speaking with white folks. The concept works both as an allusion to Twain’s extensive use of dialect, and as a leitmotif regarding identity that Everett revisits throughout.

Despite its deeper appreciation for the toxic snarl of slavery and race, roughly the first third of James tracks with its foundational source. The middle third starts to deviate, the threads separating. Old characters such as the King and the Duke appear, but receive a malevolent shading. By the end, Twain and Everett part entirely, with everything unraveling in a way that is hard to discuss without giving everything away.

***

Suffice to say, the slaveocracy that provides the background for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is foregrounded in James. Everett’s gaze is unblinking as he describes not simply the use of racist language, but whippings, lynchings, and sexual assault. There are moments – such as a visit to a “breeding” plantation – that Twain never could have written about, even if he’d wanted.

If I haven’t been clear, I should add that the comedic aspects of James have been grossly oversold. There are glimmers of wryness, but those become more and more infrequent, until they disappear altogether. In its place, there is a grim, suffocating depiction of what it is like to be a human treated as property, unable to practice the most basic freedoms – such as bodily integrity – without the sufferance of another. It is a blistering portrait, both absurd in its premises – as Everett notes in his depiction of “passing,” where light-skinned blacks live as whites – and unspeakably cruel in its practice.

Humor is a way to make hard, important lessons more palatable. This is true even of slavery, as proved by James McBride’s glorious The Good Lord Bird. Everett chooses instead to make his points more directly. He doesn’t tap you on the shoulder; he grabs you by the chin.

***

James is a justly celebrated book. It won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Its reviews are overwhelmingly raves. For all that, it has noticeable seams. Most obviously, when Huck and Jim are together, a certain mood prevails, one that is familiar if not exactly comforting. When they are apart, there is a wild tonal swing, with Jim experiencing literal horrors while toggling between frightened runaway and single-minded avenger. During these periods, I often forgot Huck existed at all, and his reappearances are disruptive.

Furthermore, from a storytelling point of view, I was not entirely onboard with all of Everett’s choices. Specifically, there is a revelation regarding Huck that – to me – cuts out the heart of Twain’s original meaning, without ever replacing it with anything else. I can respect that Everett intended a surgical excision without necessarily finding it satisfying.

***

James and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn end up being two very different versions of the same species.

Twain places events in a vaguely antebellum America, in made-up St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, Everett’s Jim and Huck go on the run from non-made-up Hannibal, Missouri, with the Civil War just beginning. They even run into some real-life characters during their travels. Twain leaves much to the imagination; Everett is graphic. Twain takes time to enjoy the idyll on the river, seeing in the ceaseless Mississippi current the embodiment of freedom; Everett paints everything, river included, as a hellscape.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn goes down easy. James gets stuck in your throat. Perhaps it is not an entirely pleasant experience, but it probably shouldn’t be.

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samuel Clemens, who took the steamboating term “Mark Twain” as his pen name, knew the Mississippi was a deadly river to navigate. But it feels like a tranquil brook next to the tumultuous waters of American literature.

You can hear that stress prefigured at the end of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” when Huck admits, “If I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it.”

Indeed, Huck has never had it easy.

Mark Twain toiled on the manuscript off and on for years — sometimes unsure how to continue it and clearly unsure how to end it. Before the novel was released, someone noticed that an illustration of Uncle Phelps had been enhanced with an obscene endowment. That act of vandalism, presumably by an unknown engraver, was fixed, but just weeks after the book appeared in 1885, the library in Concord, Mass., condemned “Huckleberry Finn” as “trash.” Once critics caught that scent, they never let up.

Huck’s coarseness was initially the problem — “the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people,” according to one library committee. And the dialect that Twain sweated over offended the sensibilities of self-styled defenders of English who knew how a proper book should sound.

As many White Americans began to catch up with Huck’s respect for his Black friend, the book’s use of the n-word — more than 200 times — was increasingly intolerable. By the 1950s, some schools were expelling “Huck Finn” for its racial insensitivity. As late as 2007, it was still one of the 10 most challenged books in the country.

It’s worth noting that Huck begins his own story by referring to Mr. Mark Twain with a little metafictional joke: “He told the truth, mainly.”

That word “mainly” runs as wide as the Mississippi in the spring. And on the currents of such a stream of possibilities, Percival Everett has now set “James,” his sly response to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

The timing may be accidental, but it couldn’t be better. Our barely United States is once again tearing itself apart over which books should be banned and how African American history should be taught. Meanwhile, “American Fiction,” an adaptation of Everett’s 2001 novel, “Erasure” — which satirizes the publishing industry’s condescending regard for Black writers — is up for five Academy Awards. What better moment for one of the nation’s preeminent authors to reconceive the nation’s central novel?

Like Huck, you might think, “I been there before,” but. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Booker Shortlist 2024

Percival Everett reimagines—no, inverts-- the classic saga of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that resides in every American’s consciousness. Huck Finn and enslaved Jim’s adventures have been in print for 140 years. If you didn’t read it in American schools, you’ve likely still been affected by its content. Everett reappropriates that story, turns it upside down and inside out, and leans formidably forward by making this a story and POV of Jim, with Huck at his side.

I am in awe and in thorough admiration of Percival Everett’s skills and fierce talent. My personal favorites, The Trees (shortlisted for Booker in 2022), and Telephone (a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2021) combine laconic protagonists, subversive wit, and tragic events. In James, he has made Twain’s classic his own historical fiction, and I applaud it as the contemporary bookend of Clemens' saga. He improves upon it by giving Jim agency. I predict that they will be teaching both books side by side in the coming years.

“White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them…The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us.” This is Jim, teaching his daughter and other enslaved children a lesson in coded speech. Although they speak eloquently amongst themselves, they communicate submissively to white people in a "slave dialect," which enhances their survival in a world where they are nothing but chattel. It also illuminates their resourceful intelligence as they hide (linguistically) in broad daylight from their ignorant “massas.”

Additionally, the enslaved people pretend that God and Jesus are primary in their lives, when in actuality, as Jim states, regarding white folks, “religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.” How cynical it was that early American Christian identity was predicated on a proslavery theology.

As in Twain’s original, Jim and Huck run off together from Hannibal, Missouri and ride the Mississippi River, beginning in a raft. The main plotline of the original text is captured, but comically and dramatically turned on its head. Jim leads a double life—one that he owns, and one that meets white people’s expectations. In fact, there are those that are more threatened by a Black man with eloquence than they are by a Black man with a pistol.

Intelligence is Jim’s stunning subterfuge. He has a rich interior life, and in dreams, he debates slavery and philosophy with the likes of Voltaire, Rousseau, and John Locke. As an autodidact who enriched himself in Judge Thatcher’s library, Jim spends stealth nights in there poring over the judge’s books. His quick wit, thoughtful compassion, and deep humanity also become his ammunition in a hostile world.

As the plot progresses, Jim and Huck grow closer, and more revelations are gradually disclosed. The major twist is foreshadowed early on, so it doesn’t come out of nowhere, and it changes the complexion of the story. As others have already noted, this is the novel that Everett was born to write. In his hands, his heart.

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is impossible for me to review James without first talking about the novel that inspired it, Huckleberry Finn. Hemingway proclaimed that all modern American literature starts with Mark Twain’s book. I believe this is true. I also believe that Huckleberry Finn is a deeply flawed masterpiece. The first two thirds of it are pitch dark satire. Twain was skewering not only the institution of slavery, but the entirety of the Southern culture he was raised in, yet disguising the satire with Huck’s unreliable narration. But he pulled his punches. Twain was unwilling to follow through with the dark and tragic ending that his satire demanded, so instead, in the last third of the book he brought in Tom Sawyer and turned his dark satire into a childish and ridiculous farce. I read Percival Everett’s James hoping that it would proved a corrective to this major flaw in Mark Twain’s work.

On one count Everett delivered. He completely jettisoned the farcical material with Tom Sawyer and the Phelps farm that so marred Twain’s original novel. The problem is, he also abandoned the satire. Instead, what Everett delivers is a kind of racial parable or morality play. The world he creates seems a mashup of the antebellum slave South and the post war Jim Crow South, and he seems to be taking us on a stations of the cross type journey to expose the myriad horrors of slavery and racism. It’s still dark, but I would have preferred satire to morality tale.

One thing nagged at me through the entire story. Everett writes James as not only literate, but erudite. This is certainly not unprecedented. Frederick Douglass was such a man. He wrote so well that many whites refused to believe that it was his own work. But Douglass had a backstory. We know how his master’s wife went against both law and tradition and taught young Douglass to read and write. But we have no such explanation for how James came to not only be literate, but so erudite that he is conversant with John Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. I suspect the reason this detail is ignored is that it would introduce a “white savior” element that would feel out of place in this particular parable.

James isn’t a bad story. Many of the changes Everett introduced worked well, and I read through it in just a couple of sittings. But it wasn’t the book I was looking to read. I wanted dark satire in the spirit of the best parts of Huckleberry Finn, and instead I got a dark parable that didn’t quite seem authentic.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction 2024
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024
And with this, I'm joining the ranks of those demanding Everett to be awarded a Pulitzer for this one ASAP. The observation that the novel is a very loose retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which, btw, I never particularly liked - go ahead and sue me) from the perspective of Jim only scratches the surface of what Everett achieves. Much like in The Trees, he is out for Quentin Tarantino-esque revenge, but his social critique turned satire now feeds off ideas about race as performance: Just think The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life meets Black Skin, White Masks.

Language and performance are employed to show how supremacy is performed as a ridiculous act with gruesome consequences. It's not the colloquial, harmless Jim used by his slavers our narrator claims as his name, but the full version, fitting to the serious man he is: James. The runaway is bilingual, speaking standard American English and the simplified version of English that is expected from him as sub-human property - and it's this language that protects him, because it pacifies racists who deem themselves superior. At some point, James is sold to a minstrel troupe as a tenor, so he is painted white in order to let him appear to be a white man in blackface, while another performer turns out to be a light-skinned Black man passing as white and performing in blackface. What the actual fuck, you ask? Well, that's the logic of racism: It's non-existent, which makes it all the more suitable to execute random acts of brutality, and that's what Everett illustrates (plus that torturing others takes away the torturer's dignity, not that of the victim). Not-so-fun fact: Mr. Mark Twain was a fan of the real-life version of the minstrel troupe, the Virginia Minstrels.

As for the plot, it's certainly very implausible, which gives the book the air of a fairy tale (and I mean the dark German and Danish ones) that clashes with social realism ca. 1860 - it remains picaresque, but the main character navigating the mythical Mississippi searching for (moral) growth (as is integral to the classic Bildungsroman) is not even considered a person by society. The adventures of James, a book lover in his mid-20's who flees because he is supposed to be sold and fears to lose his wife and daughter, involve all kinds of people and situations illuminating the dynamics of social roles between Black and white people in the South shortly before the Civil War. Huckleberry takes on a whole new role as well.

Frankly, I do think that Erasure and The Trees are superior literary works, but the fact that Everett lovingly subverts an American classic that was progressive for its time, but is not anymore, will certainly endear him to scholars and prize judges even more. Be it as it may, Everett deserves all the acclaim: His razor sharp wit and propulsive writing are highly recognizable and simply captivating.

You can listen to the podcast crew discuss the German translation in our Booker special: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...

[Emmanuel Kostakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

Everett abandons Huck Finn as narrator, placing us instead in the weary, observant eyes of Jim, the enslaved man who aids Huck on his flight down the Mississippi. Jim, in Everett's hands, is no longer a sidekick, a naïve truth-teller but a shrewd critic of his own captivity and a wry observer of white America's absurdities; his gaze a searing indictment of the racial hypocrisy. The familiar scenes of the river journey take on a new and unsettling power; a journey that curdles into a treacherous odyssey, the idyllic fantasies of Huck shattered against the hard realities of Jim's captivity. The picaresque humor of the original is now intwined with a bitter awareness of the violence and degradation that pervade Jim's world.

“…natural liberties, and we all have them by virtue of being human. But when those liberties are put under societal and cultural pressure, they become civil liberties, and those are contingent on hierarchy and situation.”

James is not a comfortable read. It is a confrontation, a reckoning with the sins that continue to haunt the American “experiment”. It is a novel that forces us to ask ourselves just how much has truly changed since the days of Jim and Huck's fictional flight down the Mississippi. It is a challenge, a call to interrogate our most cherished assumptions. Everett's prose is sharp puncturing Twain's sentimentality and exposing the hypocrisy that infects Huck's narrative. But for those willing to descend into the depths with Everett, James offers a necessary illumination, a harsh light that reveals the complexities of race, identity, and the elusiveness of true freedom in America.

“Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?” “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”

4.7/5

[Colin Baldwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read but it falls short of a 5-star rating from me.
I’ve appreciated reading many of those who have reviewed it more favourably.
I reckon I was expecting more, however must say this has whetted my appetite for Mark Twain’s popular Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn’s stories.
3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

[Taufiq Yves · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I found out this book was basically a spin-off of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn my first thought was - shouldn’t it be called The Adventures of James instead?

So yeah, if you’re planning to read this 1, it’s best to brush up on the original storyline first. That’s because at least 50% or maybe more of this book follows the same timeline as Huck’s journey down the Mississippi. The big difference is the spotlight shifts to Jim - the Black slave from Twain’s novel. And yep, Jim is short for James. That alone gives you a clue about Everett’s framing and perspective in this retelling.

Mark Twain was already calling for racial equality over 140 years ago, and the Civil War that followed was fought under the banner of freeing the slaves. But a century later, we still need books like James to amplify Black voices. What’s even more heartbreaking is how deeply this story still resonates - maybe even more than Twain’s original. Why? Because racism hasn’t really improved. If anything, it feels like it’s gotten worse. Strip away the high-tech gloss of modern life, and humanity doesn’t seem to have evolved much at all.

Compared to the original, this spin-off is way easier to read. Twain used a ton of dialect to stay true to how Southern Black people spoke at the time, which made it authentic but also pretty tough to get through. Everett, on the other hand, simplifies the language for modern readers. But I felt he doesn’t just make it easier - he reimagines James as a literate, thoughtful, book-loving young man who reads Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. It’s a clever move that both modernizes the character and gives him a powerful voice.

If you’ve read Huck Finn, you’ll remember that Jim wasn’t with Huck the whole time - they got separated more than once. And in 19th-century America, a Black man traveling alone in the South sounds terrifying. Every time they split up, it felt like it could be the last. Everett uses those gaps to fill in James’s own adventures.

1 major divergence from the original happens after the Duke and the King show up. James gets stuck at a blacksmith’s shop, then sold into a choir group. During his escape, he runs into a former choir member - a white guy who thinks he’s Black and has totally rejected his own race. The 2 of them start a scam selling runaway slaves, but things go sideways when a rescue attempt leads to a young enslaved girl getting shot by her master. Since this white character doesn’t appear in the original when James reunites with Huck, Everett has to write him out - he dies in a shipwreck. From that point on, the timeline starts to diverge from Twain’s. The original never mentions the Civil War, but here, you’ll start to see signs of it. There’s no full-on battle scene, so maybe it’s just the lead-up, which keeps the timeline roughly aligned.

Potential Spoilers Ahead!

Everett clearly planned it this way to set up James’s emotional turning point. The final section is all about James trying to rescue his wife and kids. When he returns home and finds out they’ve been sold - and sees his friends humiliated - his path of vengeance begins. Whether in the original or this spin-off, James’s actions are always restrained. He’s a slave, after all, so he can’t just go full action-hero. But once he “awakens,” he steps into a kind of heroic mode - like a warrior for his people.

The ending totally got me hyped. There’s hand-to-hand combat, powerful dialogue, clever schemes, wind, fire, gunfights - the whole cinematic finale package. But maybe that’s also why it didn’t win the Booker Prize. Making the shortlist was probably as far as it could go.

4.2 / 5 stars

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I started reading this I had the thought that maybe I should re-read Huck Finn. I decided not to and shortly after I started reading I remembered more and more of the original. What Everett has done here could not be done by many authors. He is, quite frankly, brilliant. He has made James a person in his own right. A multi layered, intelligent, deeply caring man who just happens to be a slave. His sorrow, his empathy for Huck, even some wry humor as Huck and James try to find a world of acceptance for whom they are.

I loved how though Huck knew James was black, was a slave, he didn't know what that meant. His acceptance of James for who he was, his innocence shines through his short life of heartache and abuse at the hands of his father.

I in no way think my review can possibly do this novel justice. One really must experience this book for oneself. Everett has quickly become a favorite of mine and I am looking forward to what he chooses to write about next. It is hard to write acceptable alternative histories. Comparisons often fall short, but not in this case. He has, in fact, made Huck and James story even better.

The narration was perfect. Hearing the story in James words, made this reading experience even better.

[Jaimie Pole · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can not believe this was a Pulitzer finalist…it felt like reading an eighth grade writing assignment.

[Amina · Rating 5 out of 5]

** Pulitzer Prize winner 2025**

Wow, that touched my soul in a way I wasn’t expecting—the winner of numerous accolades and well-deserved. I finished the last few pages on a flight, slightly shattered and profoundly hopeful.
James is a powerful, moving read. It deeply touched my heart and was much more than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We delve deeply into the world of Jim (James), cheering for him throughout his treacherous journey. It's heartbreaking and heartwarming —an extraordinary story. Reading the original story as an adult, I wanted more for "Jim," and found it in this book.

There were many moments I was brought to tears—rarely has a story transformed me into an unfamiliar time and place. Author Percival Everett transcended time, creating an atmosphere that is both uncomfortably gut-wrenching, tragic, humorous, and heartwarming. How often can you say that about a book?

The most significant deviation from the original story was James' education — primarily his ability to read, an advantage he kept close to his heart and a tremendous transformation.

If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair ...

Some reviewers didn't like this change, but it created a balanced and believable possibility that James could stand up for himself and overcome the oppressive system.

When Huck uncovers the truth about his father, I was moved to tears.

You can be white or black. Nobody will question you.” “What should I be?” “Just keep living,” I said. “Just remember, once they see you, or see me in you, you’ve been seen. I know you don’t understand. But you will one day

He had always felt affection for me, if not actual love. He had always looked to me for protection, even when he thought he was trying to protect me

There exists an unbroken truth between Huck and James—like father and son, they will support each other through it all. They have a genuine connection that touches the heart.

While reading James, I was sitting at the edge of my seat, hoping he would escape and find freedom for himself and his family, but hope can't always be trusted.

“What’s so funny?” “I don’t know. Hope? Hope is funny. Hope is not a plan. Actually, it’s just a trick. A ruse."

The most potent quote in the entire book--encompassing the inequality:

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

Why did I love this story so much? It moved quickly, the drama intense and continuous. The quotes were thought-provoking, and the story was what we needed to read in the dark climate of current affairs. Jim was a resilient character; his struggles, fears, and happiness were all part of the reader's psyche.

Overall, one of my top reads this year!

5/5 stars

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Heaven for this climate; hell for my long-awaited lunch with Mark Twain.”

My best friend Sharon wanted to discuss this book with me. So, I couldn’t wait for “James” to come in from our local library. Surprisingly, for both of us, we were one of the first to receive it.

And, so I put all my other books on my “currently reading” Goodreads list aside, and began to read this one.

Let me address the elephant in the room. For me. First.

I will give you an example of my concern here…

“Lak I say, I furst found my hat up on a nail. ‘I ain’t put dat dere,” I say to mysef. ‘How dat hat git dere?’

I recognize that speaking this way was the dialect of the time. But does it need to be written that way in contemporary books? Every time I had attempted to read this story, with words spoken in that dialect, it felt uncomfortable and unpleasant.

I can appreciate that the author was trying to stay true to the times, and the characters, but I felt myself tripping over those words and wondering if I would be able to get myself through the pages. My head would begin to hurt, and I would find myself slamming the book down in frustration.

And then I would find myself asking…

Was the whole book going to “talk” this way? And, if so, was I going to be disappointed and miss out on the story, and my discussion with Sharon? I could feel a dilemma coming on. What was I to do?

I read a few more pages.

It appeared as long as they weren’t talking, it was easy to follow the narrator, James telling of his story. It would just be when James or anyone else would speak that I would cringe. And, this book was full of conversations. And, of course, this story, and what we are wanting from his story, is his slave’s point of view.

I continued to read.

Thankfully, the author provides short chapters. He is taking us on the same adventure as Huckleberry Finn, but through James’ view instead. It would be his perspective. And, as readers, we will follow along with him.

If anyone remembers Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, some scenes may seem familiar, but the author finds ways to insert the story with his own backdrops. So, that the emphasis is on James and how he views the world and what is happening in it.

As I mentioned earlier, it was hard for me when the book was conversational. And yet, that was the majority of the story.

So, how did that make my reading experience? Less than enjoyable? And yet, could this be a brilliant telling of a homage to Twain? After all, this was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

To be honest, I am conflicted. It isn't going to be an easy read (besides what I mentioned). My Goodreads friend, Jamie shares it best. Her review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

But…let’s just say it got better as I continued to read. It was an adventure, most importantly. And, despite the “language barrier” I think it was a worthwhile read.

Update: this book just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 2024. According to the NY Times article on May 6, 2025, it wasn't won easily though. "In a surprising twist, the prize went to Everett after the Pulitzer committee’s board failed to reach a consensus on the three finalists that the fiction jury initially presented — Rita Bullwinkel’s “Headshot,” Stacey Levine’s “Mice 1961,” and Gayl Jones’s “The Unicorn Woman.”"

[Matthew Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

149th book of 2023.

4.5. I hate rewrites and reimaginings and after Kingsolver's rubbish Demon Copperhead, I was sceptical to read Everett's James (which is due to be published in March next year), but I adore The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and couldn't resist starting immediately when this advance copy was sent to me. Safe to say, pretty early on, this was going to be a different story.

The beginning follows the plot of the original. Many events that happen are exactly as Twain invented them, but of course, everything feels different: Jim is the narrator, and Everett has crafted him into something better. For starters: the way Jim speaks in Twain's novel is merely, we learn, a 'language' that all slaves speak, and put on, for white people. As soon as any white people leave a scene, Jim drops the act. And, at times it's clear Everett wants us to laugh, however uncomfortably, as soon as a white person reappears, Jim picks it up again, Lawdy, Lawdy! He can read, he can write. He harbours nihilistic tendencies. He is not Jim, but James.

And Huck. There is no shortage of reviews damning Twain's novel as being racist. There's no shortage of people thinking it should be banned, even now. I won't lie, I was unsure about how Everett would deal with it, because there's no hiding the fact that the original novel has had a controversial and problematic history. He nails it, though. Huck feels exactly like he felt in the original. It felt like reading Twain. Huckleberry Finn is a problematic person, as history often created; he is a child born into a world of slaves and racism, with a deadbeat and abusive father. And despite the horrible ending of the original novel, Huck, I believe, even in Twain, loved Jim. And Everett blossoms that.

By perhaps the midway point, Everett begins to steer the story. The plot changes. There are some twists and inventions. There are some Django Unchained moments of revenge and retribution. The book is riddled with satire, action, pain and suffering. I've only read The Trees but this already feels like the book Everett was here to write. This is a theory from Swann, my old professor: that every writer spends their life trying to write only one book, and everything else, all their other books, are merely tests, byproducts. Vonnegut's, for example, was Slaughterhouse-Five. This, I think, with my limited knowledge, was Everett's. It just feels like it. It feels like all his power and energy collected here.

If you haven't read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, read it. It's one of the Great American Novels. Then, in March, when this hits the bookshops, buy it.

A thousand thanks to Pan Macmillan for the advance copy.

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update : Now the winner for Pulitzer Prize 2025 - A deserving winner. Congratulations.

Update : Now longlisted for Booker Prize 2024 - The longlist looks promising.

Unlike other recent retellings, the one of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" told from the perspective of Jim feels more than an easy commercial endeavor. The transformation of Jim into James is something that the modern reader needs to put next to what has become, in recent years, a controversial classic.

"You can write? I cain't hardly write. What else can you do? Can you fly? What else ain't you told me, Jim?"

Luckily, Percival Everett (who has had a great year with this one and the Oscar-winning American fiction based on his novel 'Erasure') was the one who took on the task of imagining this transformation.It is a worthy and impactful journey that has the problem of having dialogue like this:

"Okee. So, blue gum monkey on up da Allen, yes, like Lucifer done bit on da broomstick. And them Charles be down on him like white on rice. I mean, they be on 'em like them ..."

It is interesting to see Jim thinking one way and talking in another, but it gets hard to read these passages.I also think that in the end, Percival Everett is a little undecided on what to do with James. There are moments of horror that don't match with Django/James Bond situations.

But 'James' does the job because it doesn't make the mistake where it matters. The updated relationship with Huck remains the highlight of the novel.

[nastya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I’m done with Percival Everett. My journey started four books prior and even though I was not a convert, I thought him interesting, there was something Pynchonian, Don Delillian, and then later I saw him mentioning Pynchon as one of his writing heroes. But with every new book I read from him, I enjoy him less and less.

I had the same issues with James as I did with his Trees. There’s no subtlety, the book is not interested in creating characters or even in satirizing, at least the way I see it. Everett just used the vague framework of the original to write a cathartic story about an avenging angel, this time the judgement is slavery, before it was lynching. This time the angel is just one person, Twain’s Jim who is James. The tone was weird, this book doesn’t add much to the original for way too long, making it a chore to read. When, finally, his book becomes his own and plots diverge, it becomes even less interesting. There’s one big reveal in the end that some reviewers seem to be puzzled about, yet it made sense to me, it was needed to explain Twain’s Jim’s choices, to transcend him from the magical dimwitted plot device to a human being who doesn’t make every decision in his life to benefit white people around him, the way white writers tended (some still do) to write black characters. Yet it still wasn’t enough and nothing interesting was explored in that relationship. Just a shame.

Edit: Check out the comment section that has thoughts about women in this novel. Big yikes.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous read… action packed.. humorous in many spots and moves at a fast pace!
This is the story of James, a runaway slave who needs to get money to buy his wife and daughter from the slave owner. Huck is helpful here too.
This all happens right before the start of The Civil War. Some surprises!

I listened to most of Huckleberry Finn on audio prior to reading this..I think you should have some knowledge of that story before reading this… you can find a summary of that book online.