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Lost Souls
Review of The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
Guilt, repentance, compassion, love, hate, fear, self-awareness — all are experienced by most of humanity. Morality and immorality are present in every human being, except for the few who are truly amoral.
The Book of the Night Women delves deeply into the troubled souls of the men and women, white, black, and mixed race, who are living in an environment constrained by the “rules” of slavery.
Wealthy European families take ownership of sugar plantations in Jamaica, dreaming of empire, of power, of prestige. But the realities of the life of a slave owner strip them of their humanity. Any act of kindness must take a back seat to the master/slave relationship.
Lilith, the narrator of the story, is a mixed-race slave who struggles to find her place in this dysfunctional environment. She is one of the few characters in this story that troubles herself to search her conscience for answers as to what determines what is right and what is wrong when living in a totally immoral environment.
Robert Quinn, the white man who takes Lilith as his housemaid and lover, seems to be in love with her, but that assumption is stripped away when the reader realizes just how quickly Quinn jumps…
