Living in the Freedom of the Spirit Book Review

April 21, 2022 Post a Comment

Title: The Freedom Maze

Author: Delia Sherman

Genre: Historical, SF, Young Developed, PoC

Publisher: Small Beer Press
Publication date: Nov 22nd 2011
Hardcover: 258 pages

Set up against the burgeoning Ceremonious Rights movement of the 1960s, and and then just before the outbreak of the Ceremonious War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine.

In 1960, 13-year-old Sophie isn't happy almost spending summer at her grandmother's old house in the Bayou. But the house has a maze Sophie can't resist exploring once she finds it has a secretive and playful inhabitant.

When Sophie, bored and solitary, makes an impulsive wish inspired by her reading, hoping for a fantasy gamble of her own, she slips one hundred years into the past, to the year 1860. On her arrival she makes her fashion, bedraggled and tanned, to what volition one day be her grandmother's house, where she is at once mistaken for a slave.

Stand up alone or series: Stand solitary

How did I get this book: Bought

Why did I read this book: N.Grand. Jemisin raved about the volume in her Smugglivus Postal service and I bought information technology as presently as I read her post. It's been sitting in my Kindle ever since simply then last week, the book was nominated for a ~~Nebula~~Andre Norton Award, and I just knew the time had come to read it.

Review:

Information technology'south hard to pinpoint the exact moment when I realised The Liberty Maze was something special. I felt its impact from the very start: I had barely started it and already had bug falling comatose because I kept thinking about what was happening to the protagonist and where the story might get. This is a book that works on every single level I tin can think of: from a storytelling indicate of view, equally a coming of historic period tale, as a Speculative Fiction story, as a Historical novel, as a social and cultural exam of racial identity and much more. It'south a multifaceted story that is deeply affecting, gripping, thought-provoking and as shut to a perfect novel as it can be. I promise I can do information technology justice. 1 thing earlier I proceed whatever further though: I do spoil a few minor plot points, but since this is non a book about plot, this shouldn't detract at all from your enjoyment of the novel.

The Freedom Maze follows 13 twelvemonth old Sophie in the 1960s in Louisiana as she spends the summer with her aunt and grandmother at the Oak Cottage, the old family domicile of the g Fairchild family from back in the "good old days". Sophie has been left behind by her female parent who is now pursuing a new career subsequently divorcing Sophie'south father. She barely hears from her father –now living in NY with a new wife – and her relationship with her mother is fraught with tension. She constantly bemoans Sophie'due south behaviour as unladylike, complains about the state of her unruly pilus, almost her clothes, about her time spent reading books. It's been like this forever and Sophie has developed strategies bachelor to her in dealing with her mother – they involve a lot of shutting up and a lot of appeasing.

In whatsoever case, the summer is in full swing and Sophie is bored, sick of being left behind by everybody she knows and there is only then much sunbathing, reading and fishing 1 tin can do. And then there is the onetime family maze which Sophie is attracted to – a maze in a state of disrepair, haunted by the ghosts of erstwhile Fairchilds. It'southward also where she showtime comes beyond a trickster spirit that constantly teases Sophie and who obliges when she wishes she could have a grand old adventure but like the ones she reads in the books she loves. He sends her back 100 years in the past to her own family's plantation when to her dismay – because of her darker peel, considering of her hair – she is taken for a bastard kid of one of the sons and every bit a slave. Because of her close ties with the family, she becomes a firm slave, working for her "grandmother" – the Quondam Missy. At first, Sophie takes it all as an adventure but her trip to the by do non follow the script she expected information technology to and things get really serious, really fast. And Creature will not take her back until she's washed what she is supposed to practice.

From a plotting perspective Sophie's journeying to the past is perhaps the bones storyline of the novel and equally such it is a tale of survival: first every bit a house slave, then as a hand in the sugar cane plantation. Simply equally I said earlier, The Freedom Maze works on many levels, and this basic storyline expands to cover a myriad of themes.

At first, Sophie sees her trip as an take a chance and has an almost detached human relationship with the story she is living only shortly she realises there is no easy way out and she has no idea when she is going to back to her ain time. The almost fascinating thing is how the story subverts traditional time-travel stories: she is not a coincidental observer and she is not a saviour (although she does help one person in distress) and she is certainly not welcomed. Instead, she is affected by information technology but not from a perspective of a "white person who comes to acquire about slavery" either because as it turns out, Sophie and her family in 1960 are not as white as they like to believe they are. She spends six months in the past and those six months are worth an entire life – the more time she is there, the more than she forgets about her life in 1960, the more she starts to believe she is Sophie-the-slave and embraces her own tell-tale story of being the bastard child of Robert Fairchild. When she does, eventually, return to her own time, the physical consequences of her life in 1860 are not erased magically by leaving behind only memories. She goes back a inverse girl and information technology shows: it's been one-half an 60 minutes in 1960 but she has aged. To the point where she has no pick but to tell her aunt what happened.

This fits in the coming of historic period theme of the novel. Sophie starts out every bit a naïve young daughter who has to abound up fast and with no option: her life now mirrors those of the slaves she comes in contact with. Her coming of historic period is both a matter of identity and a affair of history and those are brilliantly interwoven in the narrative. Her family in 1960 is a proud white family unit who gloat their by as the "adept one-time days". They identify themselves as proficient people and nonetheless their discourse is horribly, inherently, casually racist. Her mother has removed her from her school once it became a mixed race school and is constantly telling her not to speak with Black men because they are dangerous and dirty. Despite this, there is a bright acknowledgment of how circuitous people are. In that sense, it is also possible to address gender issues here as the mother is trying to observe her own way in a globe that despises working, divorced women. There is a generational tension between Sophie and her mother but also between the latter and her own mother.

The aunt is the figure Sophie can count on the well-nigh and who really loves her, except when she becomes silent when at one betoken they find a paper cut from 1860 that refers to Sophie every bit a slave who can "pass as white". 100 years earlier that, everybody hails Dr Charles Fairchild, the owner of the plantation equally a benevolent, firm yet kind figure. He even has a hospital for infirm slaves and they are tended to with care. But that is considering they are worth money, and one has to tend to their holding well. When his daughter mistreats a slave, he gives her a lecture well-nigh how she would never whip a canis familiaris or a horse when they misbehave. The slaves are portrayed in the very same complex way: there are those who have their position more easily than others; there is as well the circuitous, difficult dynamic and bureaucracy between house-slaves and plantation-slaves; there are good people, bad people, happy or unhappy and they all take voices. 1 of the all-time, most impacting quotes from the novel comes from a slave when talking well-nigh their "benevolent" owner:

Africa spoke from the kitchen door. "You both wrong. […] In that location ain't no such thing every bit a good mistress, on account of a mistress ain't a good thing to be. Think on information technology, Mammy. Old Missy peradventure taught you to read and write and speak as white as her own children. Merely she own't set you lot free."

This is a story that challenges stereotypes at every plow with astute, subtle observations. It portrays racial identity and divide in 1860 and in 1960 and in doing and then, makes 1 wonder virtually race and identity right Now. Sophie encapsulates this when, at both ends of the book, she reacts differently to her family unit's observations – in the end, she has been altered by her experience in positive ways.

Because of this, the story is notwithstanding fundamentally a fairytale – although a freaking gut-wrenching one. Information technology is obviously a time-travel story and 1 that incorporates elements of traditional African beliefs beautifully ¹.

I besides mentioned several themes and I recall I managed to somehow practise then in a clinical, cold way when at that place isn't anything fifty-fifty remotely cold well-nigh the fashion I reacted to the story. My center went to Sophie's family (not the Fairchilds though, but her adopted family unit, the one that took care of her) and their plight. When Sophie comes dorsum to 1960 and has no way of knowing what happened to them, my centre broke aslope hers with sheer sadness.

Do you know what is surprising? I read this on my Kindle and it wasn't until I was setting up this mail service that I realised that the book is less than 300 pages long. Less than 300 pages long and it manages to accomplish so much in those pages.

In that location are books you lot but know will stay with you forever. This is ane of them.

Notable Quotes/ Parts:

Sophie Martineau looked out the window of her mother'south 1954 Ford station railroad vehicle and watched her life slide backside her into the past.

It was raining. It rained a lot in May in Louisiana, just Sophie couldn't help feeling this rain was personal. It was bad enough to be saying good-bye to her friends and her schoolhouse and the house she'd grown up in to spend the summertime stuck out in the bayou with Grandmama and Aunt Enid, knowing she'd exist coming back to a different neighborhood and a dissimilar school in the autumn. Doing it in the pelting was just rubbing her nose in information technology.

They drove past her best friend Diana Roget's house. In the wet, the big stucco firm was grim and uninviting—merely like Mrs. Roget later Papa upwards and moved to New York. In one case the divorce was final, she hadn't fifty-fifty allowed Diana to come over any more, and Sophie wasn't invited to Galveston as she had been every summer since tertiary class.

It was like Mrs.Roget idea divorce was catching, like cooties. Although she'd denied information technology, Sophie suspected Diana thought so, too

Rating: ten – Perfect

Reading Adjacent: The Sunbird past Elizabeth Wein

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