I'm reading ... Washington Black

I like an epic. Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach. A story that takes multiple characters through time, through geographic locations, through personal evolution. The best of these, like the ones mentioned above, are grounded in some historical precedent: the nascent art of comic books, the massive buildup of industrial effort for World War Two.

Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black does all of this. It takes a moment in time – in this case the waning years of the slave plantations in the Caribbean, and the wonder of 19th century scientific discovery – and wraps them up in a yarn.

Over a little more than 400 pages, the life of George Washington Black is marked by equal parts luck, horror, discovery, and injustice. He’s born into slavery on a plantation in Barbados, and at the age of 11 is plucked from the brutality of the fields to assist the plantation owner’s brother in testing out a hot air balloon. From there, the adventure of his life takes him to sea, to a glimpse of the underground railroad in Virginia, to an expedition camp in the arctic, to the colonies of Loyalist freemen in Nova Scotia, to an outpost of the Royal Society for scientific endeavor in England.

At every turn, he’s reminded of the low value of his own life. He’s a gifted artist and thinker, who’s had extraordinary luck in finding other scientific minds wherever he goes, giving him some shelter from the consistent violence and injustice that his people suffered. But there’s also a reminder on every page of the immediacy of death, shame, rage, and uncertainty that accompanies Washington wherever he goes. He knows he’ll never escape it.

The through line is his relationship with Titch, the scientist and dreamer who discovers Washington and brings him along on his own adventure. He uses Washington’s labor and artistry, eventually coming to think of him as a companion, but also making clear his comfort with his own perceived superiority. The ultimate cruelty in this story is Titch’s abandonment of Washington, walking into a whiteout in the far north and leaving his assistant to figure out how to survive. I kept reminding myself as I read that Washington is still a child when this is happening, resourceful but with no money, family or friends.

I had trouble with some of the historical anachronisms in Washington Black, mostly the idea of an unmarried young black man and a young white woman travelling freely around European cities in 1836. I also found myself wanting to know much more about the science. How do you oxygenate water to keep sea creatures alive in a tank before the advent of electricity? Edugyan’s language is so detailed and precise in its description, I would have loved to have had a page or two on this conundrum. But I was never bored by the story. Like the best epics, I was fully along for the ride.