We have a winner! Jones’ novel The Known World has now won the National Book Critics’ Circle award, the Pulitzer, and the Dublin IMPAC. I guess I should at least finish the damn thing!
Jones picked up a cool 120 Grand for his victory. AP wire here.
[saw it first at MobyLives]
First sentence: “The evening his master died he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins.”
Remember the writer in The Plague who doesn’t actually write his book, instead he obsessively polishes the first sentence, Mr. Jones is obviously NOT that guy.
Quoting the last sentence of each of the two professional reviews on Amazon.
“Impossible to rush through, The Known World is a complex, beautifully written novel with a large cast of characters, rewarding the patient reader with unexpected connections, some reaching into the present day.”
“Jones’s prose can be rather static and his phrasings ponderous, but his narrative achieves crushing momentum through sheer accumulation of detail, unusual historical insight and generous character writing.”
That doesn’t sound too promising.
And you tried it and didn’t finish it.
I think I’ll pass on this one!