Customer Reviews
Alex Haley would be proud - By: Mr. S. Vibert, 02 Sep 2008 
I am a big fan of Alex Haley's roots & therefore was curious to see how Evaristo would adapt it. This is a very well written book, with very clever observations & it manages to touch on very sensitive racial subject without ever souding racist. It is very funny but not for the faint hearted, as it depicts the horrors of slavery. Love it.
Funny, shocking, bursting with life - By: Literature lover, 14 Aug 2008 I just finished this novel, which surprised me throughout with its brilliantly inventive satire & its vivid, fresh-off-the-page life. I can't think of another writer who mixes up history & the contemporary with such casual flair (if you haven't read Evaristo's The Emperor's Babe, where she does the same thing in verse, read it now.) Nor can I think of another book which has managed to make me think again about slavery, a topic, like the Jewish holocaust of WW2, which has been written about a lot, & thus become increasingly difficult to write about. But by a stunning reversal, Evaristo shows Africans enslaving 'whytes', & the European reader re-thinks the horrors, seeing them inflicted on Europeans, & seeing alll the double-think of slavery applied by Africans to 'inferior' Europeans. But this makes the book sound too serious: in fact, it is consistently funny & bowls along, getting better & better, it seemed to me, as we move from England to Africa & end up in a richly sensual fictional version of the West Indies, where alll Evaristo's pigeons come home to roost. A fabulous book.
Blonde Roots is brilliant! - By: D. M. Shannon, 04 Aug 2008 This reallly is a wonderful book. If a better one is published this year, I'll be amazed. It's got everything: a story that builds & builds so that you can't wait to know what happens next; characters so vividly realised that you feel you know each of them personallly & care desperately about what happens to them; an incredible amount of humour, even though its subject matter is far from trivial; & an awareness & understanding of how people behave that challlenges & changes how you think. A book about slavery that is funny, lively, makes you cry & provides a completely different slant on what being "black" & "white" actuallly means - I never thought it could or would be written!
