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Loading... Kinderen en piratendoor Richard Hughes
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zeker iets voor jou Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek mooi zult vinden. Disappointing. My book group read it because we saw it on a list of 100 Best of the 20th century; not even a contender in my view. None of the characters were even likable and it was no Lord of the Flies for psychological tension among kids. Nope. It just didn't work for me. Sorry to those who love it. (  ) BCCJillster | Dec 13, 2009 |  This book feels very realistic to me, as it opens up the world of children to Hughes's readers. He presents a lot of interesting ideas that would be fun to debate in a reading group, also. (  ) KendraRenee | Nov 26, 2009 | My wife gave this to me after hearing a review on NPR about it. I had never heard of it, but plowed into it nonetheless. It was a bit odd at first, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. But then I got it... I felt the tension, not from the antagonists in the story to the protaganists, but the other way around. I was really amazed at how the story was crafted - the good bled into the bad and the bad bled into the good... I'm trying not to say too much about the story so as not to spoil it. I found great enjoyment discovering it for myself without knowing where it was going! I highly recommend this book. It is not an idealized, romantic adventure - it is real and difficult. - Mini-Spoiler Alert- I felt that the children were so very real. Hard in the way that children can only be and yet fragile. The Pirates were also hard - but very human and caring at the same time - almost despite themselves. When the made it to England, the typical way that adults see children was well captured and at the end of the story, as Emily faded into the pattern of the school she was attending, you saw her as no different than any other girl... but knew that underneath she was. Very good book. Read it! ( ) Cygnus555 | Aug 12, 2009 | After both an earthquake an a hurricane, the Bas-Thornton's decide to send their brood of children away from the wild elements of Jamaica, back to England where they shall attend school. Along with two neighboring children, the Bas-Thornton children--John, Emily, Edward, Rachel, and Laura--all board the Clorinda. Before reaching their destination, they are beset by pirates, and taken onto the pirate vessel where their future becomes murky. While this is a story about children, it is not a book for children. It is a novel meant for adults, particularly to challenge both our memories of being children, and our concepts of children. What notions of overlaid innocence and wickedness that the reader might have are over and over again dashed by the transpiring plot, and the actions of the children, the pirates, and the grown-ups otherwise involved. All are complicit, some far more than others, in the fates of those around them. This book's tale departs radically from the usual expected sorts of tales told about children and pirates. It will not please those who lap up the adventurous treacle usually doled out teaspoon by teaspoon, like a placating placebo. There are no heroes in this book, and no redemption. It is not a coming of age story, but rather a telling of an age (both time-setting and one's chronological measurement) that is lightly written even when the material is cudgel-heavy. (  ) doxtator | Aug 2, 2009 | A High Wind in Jamaica or The Innocent Voyage: by Richard Hughes This book had been on my shelf unread for many years. Mention of it on the radio prompted me to read it. Tho pirates are in the news now the plot here is quite different from the current accounts. Two families of children become hostage to pirates and as the book progresses the balance of power is disturbed in ways a reader would probably not anticipate (I did not). The sequence of events has a subtle influence on both the children and the men. There are moments of levity but they are few. Confusion and death both mark the voyage and its end, perhaps inevitable, leaves us wondering how the memories of their ordeal will affect the children in their adult lives. ( ) Esta1923 | Jul 10, 2009 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een recensie toe
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Irony finds a happy home indeed in the book's mixture of the macabre and the adorable. The baby girl, Rachel, "could even sum up maternal feelings for a marline-spike, and would sit up aloft rocking it in her arms and crooning. The sailors avoided walking underneath: for such an infant, if dropped from a height, will find its way through the thickest skull (an accident which sometimes befalls unpopular captains)." In that "such an infant" lies a world of mordant wit. In fact, throughout, Hughes's wildly eccentric punctuation and startling syntax make just the right verbal vehicle for this dark-hearted pirate story for grownups.
Hughes enjoys some coy riffing on the child mind, as with this description of the way Emily handles an uncomfortable social situation: "Much the best way of escaping from an embarrassing rencontre, when to walk away would be an impossible strain on the nerves, is to retire in a series of somersaults. Emily immediately started turning head over heels up the deck." Even so, Hughes never sentimentalizes his subject: "Babies of course are not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes." Children, as a race, are given rough treatment: "their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of thinking (are mad, in fact)." That madness is here isolated, prodded, and poked to chilling effect. But Hughes never loses sight of his ultimate objective: A High Wind in Jamaica is, above all, a cracking good yarn. --Claire Dederer
(opgehaald bij Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:10:44 -0500)
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