JOANNE (joann) - , reviewed on 4/8/2006 + 412 more book reviews

Valerie Martin's Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery's venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet-pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed-seethes under the dominin of her boorish husband. In particular she resents his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.
Exploring the permutations of Manon's own obsession with Sarah against the bckdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and the powerless.

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