If you read one book in your life, make it this one (A respectable trade - Phillipa Gregory)

Member Name: jennikitten

Product:	A respectable trade - Phillipa Gregory
Date:	08/01/09 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can't recommend it enough, it's completely mind blowing

Disadvantages: None

A Respectable Trade is a book I picked up on Amazon as part of a gift voucher birthday present. At only £1.99 new, it was a great bargain as it retails around the £8 mark normally.

I was surprised to find that this book was actually written around 1996 and has been made into a BBC serial, as I've never heard anything about it.

If you've heard of Philippa Gregory, it's probably because of her book The Other Boleyn Girl, which has fairly recently been made into a film starring Scarlett Johanssen and Natalie Portman. This in turn has created a wave of popularity for all her books - and that's how I discovered them too.

Gregory is best known for her historical novels focusing on the Tudors, and whilst A Respectable Trade is still an historical work of fiction, it is set in the times of the slave trade rather than the Tudor era, and follows the story of a particular group of slaves brought to England.

Gregory's Tudor novels are more tied into real (or perceived to be real) events focusing on Europe, the English royal family and their connections and court life. They therefore share the same outcomes as the reality, whereas this book is much more focused on the fictional story and only loosely historical, giving Gregory much more scope to develop her own characters and events.

A Respectable Trade takes a double perspective on the whole, as it shows the perspective of the slaves (in particular Mehuru, a well-respected member of his own society in African being a priest/witch doctor type of character), and the slave traders themselves (especially Frances Scott). They end up meeting as Frances' husband Josiah decides to import slaves on his ships and sell them as there is much more profit to be made than dealing in goods alone.

Now, it's quite unusual really, but I did study the American slave trade for a year in school, and I don't remember being anywhere near as shocked about it as I was when I read this book. This is probably because Gregory is truly skilled as crafting descriptions and story. The writing is not particularly complex, but it is very vivid, and it is appalling. Some of it is pretty gory and sickening stuff, so if you're really sensitive this might present something of a problem...however, Gregory doesn't just rely on this kind of shock treatment to tell her tale.

She considers a number of aspects of the slave trade: how white people viewed the blacks (were they animals, could they be taught to speak English), how they were treated as commodities (thrown overboard when in bad condition, described as numbers rather than by name, discussed in terms of monetary value - with less emphasis on the roles they might perform than you would expect in some ways). She even considers the difference in perspective between slave traders such as Josiah and his more empathetic wife Frances, who is given the task of 'teaching' the black slaves they bring home in order to make more money by selling them as servants. This is considered a risky 'experiment' as the black people apparently didn't try much in the way of communication - by the time they had suffered the crossing in poor conditions and being overcrowded, whipped, raped, shackled and much more, they had just resigned themselves to death according to Gregory, and were in no mood to co-operate, which is of course justified. This is reflected in one of the beginning scenes where Frances is desperate to make them talk in one of her 'lessons', overlooked by her strict sister-in-law.

Gregory also looks at the struggle to bring in legislation to ban the slave trade, the amount of money and wealth it brought to England and other slave trading countries (it will make you feel ashamed), and the effects on various African countries of being stripped of all their healthiest and strongest men and women, as well as children; Even 'freed' slaves that tried to go back faced a lot of problems, and 'freed' slaves in England are also looked at.

One of the most skilful things Gregory does is manipulation of your feelings towards the characters - in my opinion, this is much more successful here than in any of her other novels. You do end up with a balanced view of most of them, and you even end up pitying the previously 'hard' characters to some extent, as it becomes apparent that all of them are trapped in their own way - obviously to far different degrees, but trapped nevertheless. Ignorance also has a large part to play, and you come to realise some of the reasons why people simply accepted the slave trade.

I don't want to ruin the plot for anyone, because it has a huge number of twists and turns across several hundred pages, but I will say that it is incredibly multi-layered and has a number of subplots and mini plots woven through. Though the main characters play emotional and thought provoking parts, there are also incredible performances by the smaller characters - they aren't used for filler or to prompt the main characters, but have plot threads and personalities in their own right.

As I picked this book up with my previous experiences of Gregory in my head, I expected it to be much more based on actual history than it was. I was surprised when I got to her author's note that didn't really suggest that it was based on particular people.

It's an absolutely amazing book though, and far better than I've given it credit for here or can even begin to explain. It should definitely be made into a film, and I think it would work well adapted and given the right time frame (longer than The Other Boleyn Girl - though that should have been longer too) and budget, it could easily be legendary. I may try to get my hands on the BBC version if I can.

I can't recommend this book highly enough, it's well worth the money and the time, and is something you'll never forget - for good reasons and bad. It's part of our history, and should be remembered lest we forget the suffering and don't appreciate what we have, and so we never make the same mistakes again.

Also posted on ciao.co.uk under the same name.

Summary: If you don't love this book, I'll eat my arm!