Property

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Valerie Martin: Property (2013, Abacus)

English language

Published Dec. 29, 2013 by Abacus.

ISBN:
978-0-349-13896-1
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OCLC Number:
821694949

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5 stars (1 review)

Manon Gaudet is unhappily married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle of her native New Orleans, but most of all, she longs to be free of the suffocating domestic situation. The tension revolves around Sarah, a slave girl who may have been given to Manon as a wedding present from her aunt, whose young son Walter is living proof of where Manon's husband's inclinations lie. This private drama is being played out against a brooding atmosphere of slave unrest and bloody uprisings. And if the attacks reach Manon's house, no one can be sure which way Sarah will turn ...Beautifully written, Property is an intricately told tale of both individual stories and of a country in a time of change, where ownership is at once everything and nothing, and where belonging, by contrast, is all.

2 editions

Uncomfortable reading, but compelling

5 stars

It felt strange reading this novel about slavery as seen from the perspective of a white woman slave owner. I didn't particularly like her, although her narrative makes for compelling reading. Trapped in a loveless marriage, I did sometimes find myself starting to feel a little sorry for her predicament, but then I would see again how she regarded the slave women she owned and her attitude towards their lives easily kept me from pity.

Subjects

  • Plantation owners
  • Fiction
  • Freedmen
  • Social conditions

Places

  • Louisiana