Washington Black
Esi Edugyan · 2018
An enslaved boy becomes the assistant to a naturalist inventor and escapes via hot-air balloon. Part adventure novel, part meditation on freedom, art, and what it costs to escape the shape someone else has made for you.
The case against
Once the balloon lands, the novel turns travelogue: Nova Scotia, the Arctic, London, Morocco, each episode thinner than the one before. People who matter get dropped and never properly recovered, Titch's vanishing above all, and the ending refuses resolution in a way that reads less like ambiguity than exhaustion. A brilliant first hundred pages writes a check the rest declines to cash.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
