A High Wind in Jamaica (New York Review Books Classics)

A great book!

Haunting tale.

What a strange and delightful little find. A cross between Peter Pan and Lord of the Flies highlighting how life is all about the levels of perception.

Wow! I heard it was good, but never expected it to be THAT good. I recommend this book to everyone I know.

After all the praise I heard about this book, I expected more from it, but I still enjoyed reading it all the same.

I picked this book up at a university library book sale. I pulled it out of the piles of books because of the cover. (Not the one pictured.) I'm not sure how popular this book is, and I'd be interested as to who else has read it and what they thought of it, but I really enjoyed this book. It's not on my all-time top five, but it's a quality quick read. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for...more

I picked this book up at a university library book sale. I pulled it out of the piles of books because of the cover. (Not the one pictured.) I'm not sure how popular this book is, and I'd be interested as to who else has read it and what they thought of it, but I really enjoyed this book. It's not on my all-time top five, but it's a quality quick read. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a quick adventure story, sort of like Treasure Island. The plot? Kids on a pirate ship. Sure, it sounds like it might be kinda lame or juvenile, but it's very well written and stirs up some thought as well.   hide

I loved this book. Similar to "Lord of the Flies" in some respects, but even better

Unwisely, the pirates bring the children aboard their schooner. The children may be innocent but their world is a nightmare, their lives pathetic play acting ruled by stillborn fantasies, their thoughts primitive and grotesque. The author would have us believe children are like this, unknowable. Such is this author's fantasy.

Richard Hughes's 1929 odyssey, A High Wind In Jamaica -- which has been included in the Modern Library's List of "The 100 best English-language novels of the century"--forces the reader to revisit that moment when children lose their innocence to the world; that diaphanous transference from childhood to adulthood that can be so heartbreakingly eye-opening. In this tale, it rides...more

Richard Hughes's 1929 odyssey, A High Wind In Jamaica -- which has been included in the Modern Library's List of "The 100 best English-language novels of the century"--forces the reader to revisit that moment when children lose their innocence to the world; that diaphanous transference from childhood to adulthood that can be so heartbreakingly eye-opening. In this tale, it rides in on a torrent of bad weather seemingly induced by an earthquake.Emily Bas-Thornton has just turned ten in Jamaica and has had a wonderful birthday exploring the island, meeting a group of indigenous people and receiving their good faith gifts. But just a few days later, Margaret Fernandez, a neighbor, a bit older then Emily, announces that she can "smell" an earthquake. Thus the trouble is ushered in as the children cartwheel across the rumbling ground, and their pet, a feral cat, is pursued by predators through the Bas-Thornton house and into the jungle where its otherworldly yowls punctuate the night.Soon afterward the Bas-Thornton's decide to ship their five children back to England. From this point in the novel, things go terribly wrong as the young troupe is mistakenly kidnapped by a hapless band of Caribbean pirates. Hughes's quirky writing style enhances the dream-like quality of the narrative: seemingly important characters die without the bat of an eyelash, good seems bad, and right seems wrong from the vertiginous heights of the reader's crow's nest.From the primitive wilderness of the Caribbean Islands to the hyper-civilized atmosphere of an English Central Criminal Courtroom, the novel follows a logical if allegorical arc; but does Hughes mean to describe this arc as progressive or regressive?A High Wind in Jamaica is one of those books that lulls the reader into a long and languorous torpor. Then it shakes you, slaps you and says "snap out of it".   hide