Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent, thoughtful, and utterly compelling
Review: Edward P. Jones tackles a difficult subject with depth and courage. Unlike other reviews listed here, I did not find his prose difficult, but enjoyed its richness and color, and found "The Known World" filled with flawed and genuine people of all races who grapple with slavery-America's "peculiar institution"-in a way that will surprise and compel readers.Mourners come to Manchester County, Virginia to bury Henry Townsend and comfort his widow Caldonia. Henry was only 31 years old, a successful landowner and the owner of 33 slaves. He was also black, and a former slave himself. His human property learned from the start that working for a black master was no different from working for a white-or an Indian, for that matter. But they hold out the tiniest shred of hope that Caldonia, who was born free, will free them. Henry's father Augustus bought his own freedom from his owner, Bill Robbins. He then worked to buy his wife, and then his son. But Henry always felt more affinity with Robbins than he did with his own family, shocking his parents when he buys his first slave. There are a number of black and Cherokee slave owners in the area who look on slaves with perhaps even more dispassionate eyes than do their white neighbors. "The legacy," Henry's mother-in-law calls his slaves when Caldonia briefly considers manumitting them. "Don't throw away the legacy." I have never found a book that looks at slavery like "The Known World" does. Throw your preconceived notions out the window and be prepared to be completely pulled into a world where, no matter the characters' race, nothing is black and white.
Rating: 
Summary: No surprises here for a multicultural reader
Review: The tragedy of this Edward P. Jones novel is slavery, period. And the woeful tale of this set of characters is subject to yet another version of the American saga which presents one more twist of the knife in the heart of humanity. How could a black man, a former slave, bought out of slavery by his formerly slave parents, an only and most prized son, emulate his former slave owner and become a master of his own race, a slave owner? Well it happened. And this story originates in Virginia with interjected references to the descendants of its characters who will finally live in freedom and make an in-road into the leadership of coming generations. If anyone has read the works of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, David Bradley, John Edgar Wideman, they know of the many other voices of the black man's story in America. And if one reads Edward Jones and becomes fascinated by his revelations, let me advise you that his skills replicate those of other black authors also of this time who have written before him. In fact, for all his notice in the world of literature, Jones is not the writer that his predecessors who still live and write are. His writing is rather disjointed in comparison. But if Jones' work and subject matter so move you, springboard from this book, if it is pivotal to you, and read Wideman, Bradley, Morrison, Walker, and saturate yourself in an even greater understanding of the legacy of slavery in this nation now in its 21st century. Truly, while reading Jones' work, even the start of Moses' time in the wilderness, a private and sensual freedom from his Master's control, recalls to mind the stories found in Walker's "Meridian" and Morrison's "Song of Solomon" with the rich tribal mysticism of those African slaves so recently from another continent. Those characters, too, isolate themselves into the wilds and seek rejoinder with their African past, in most primitive expressions not unlike that which Moses executes and his fellow slaves witness in secret. Most poignant in this novel, of course, is the shocking reality of the continued brutality to the black freeman, who once free, having labored long to buy his way out of slavery, is subject to the whim of roving speculators, those scum of the underworld who trade in human flesh beyond the hand of justice. The ironical death of the black slave master, Henry Townsend, and the quandry into which his educated wife Caldonia is thrown seems so unlikely. But one has only to remember the blue vein society of blacks who "passed" and their stories of class systems against their own race as revealed in the short stories of Charles W. Chestnutt, particularly the story, "The Wife of His Youth", to realize that Henry Townsend's widow and her upper crust friends lack the strength of character to free their slaves; their people and their weakness is only human, though inhumane. The corruption of owning others is copied by Henry Townsend who eventually lives free, but remains as the best friend and surrogate son of his former white master, William Robbins. He rejects the example of his own flesh, his father Augustus, and enters into the money-making proposition of owning those of his own race so as to prosper and reach a gentleman's status, as high as he can go in the ranks of free blacks. Henry's first slave, Moses'plan to seduce the grieving Caldonia and come to be the surviving master, shows his personal deception. He has been a slave, the foreman of the Townsend slaves, and believes he can rise out of his slave ranks to those of master via marriage. Another fool he, another dupe to the wicked deception that is integral to slavery. There is a powerfully tragic tale to be told in these pages. Don't let them be the last that you read about this subject. Read the works of other black writers of our time and LEARN.
Rating: 
Summary: Well worth the effort
Review: I wouldn't characterize this book as one I couldn't put down, but I am glad I read it. I find it hard enough to fathom one man owning another, much less the thought of a man freed from slavery turning around and, of his own free will, owning others. There is something oddly compelling about Jones' writing style that kept me turning the pages, but he employs some literary devices I find distracting. For example, in many places the reader is told about an event in a character's history, their present circumstances and how this affects their future all in the same paragraph. Personally, I liked these shifts in time, but I can see how other reviewers and readers might find this troubling. Occasionally I was forced to go back and reread sections in order to orient myself and this, of course, interrupted the flow of my reading. One thing I did find annoying in the beginning was the number of characters. Their lives were so intricately, interwoven I kept confusing them. I finally resorted to making a flow chart in order to keep them all straight. The details woven into the story are so convincing, I have now read several reviews applauding the amount of research Jones "must" have done. In interviews, however, the author has stated all of these "facts" came directly from his imagination. Overall, I thought this was a very interesting, thought provoking book. I would recommend reading it when you have time to savor the details and enough patience to untangle all of the threads. Definitely not a quick, beach read, but well worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting Characters from a Haunting Subject
Review: First off, this novel is not written in a lineal fashion. At times the author jumps decades, even a century into the future. It took me a while to warm to the style, but not only does it work, it is the way one person would tell the a story about another person: "He did this and this. Little did we know that he would become a ..." There are few authors who can portray characters as well as Mr. Jones. I would put him in Steinbeck's class. The reader gets to know all the characters in this book well. At first, I thought Mr. Jones was merely introducing the people who populate this book (and there is a significant population of characters). I then realized that this was what the book was all about - the lives of these people in Madison County Virginia. And what interesting lives they were. The central theme is slave-owning blacks. The slave-owners, white and black, are followed as are free blacks and free whites. At the center is the plantation and its denizens of a slave-owning black named Henry. He was bought out of slavery as a boy by his father who now disapproves of his son's holding slaves. When Henry dies, his widow tries unsuccessfully to hold the plantation together with what she perceives is the benevolence that would allow her to follow her husband to heaven. Heaven accepted benevolent slave-owners. One ned not free his slaves to get through the Pearly Gates. It should be noted that some of the descriptions of this book portray the central theme as this disintegration. However, it comes near at the end of the book and is almost an afterthought. The heart of this book is the tenuous intertwining of whites and blacks in the ante-bellum south. Rather than the usual handling of these tensions, this book adds the compelling component of blacks owning blacks. This addition of a fourth class of southern citizen after rich whites, poor whites and slaves enriches this book and makes it a five star read. The rich character portraits carry the story-line rather than vice versa. I strongly recommend this book. It was wonderfully written, the characters hauntingly unforgettable and the topic a little known one that is compelling.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure fiction
Review: Jones has admitted that he did not do any research for this book. He must have researched slavery or at least learned a little about it at some point, but basically he's taking a very sad event in black history and completing fabricating a story. The places and people aren't real, even the "historians" he mentions are fabrications. As a novel, this is not a bad book but as a look at one element of the story of American slavery, this novel does nothing to contribute to our understanding. Fictionalizing slavery can be done well but if the author doesn't research the topic, the reader cannot see it as a book about slavery but as a novel about people who are dropped into a slavery setting. There's a huge difference and it's a shame that the difference isn't made clear in an author's note at the start of the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Take the time
Review: Jones certainly doesn't take the easy route. The book is tremendously complex, and at once compassionate and dispassionate: nobody is condemned, nobody is lauded, but his characters are given a humanity which seems almost uncanny in its depth. Jones's exquisitely balanced writing means that nearly every word has equal weight, and so it's impossible to skim. The Known World really can't be reduced to the narrative that's often given for it as the story of free blacks who owned slaves. Compelling as that story is, it leaves out the book's greater richness: Jones has created a world which is no less plausible as history for being a creation of his imagination, and no less powerful for its refusal to declare simple allegiances.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Incredibly crafted and compelling, THE KNOWN WORLD does a lot of things, but disappoint is not one of them. I was prepared to find just a "good story" when I purchased this book. What I got instead was a tour-de-force piece of literature on the same level as THE COLOR PURPLE. I agree with another reviewer in that Edward P. Jones is in the same league as Steinbeck or any of the other greats. The writing is beautiful and the story is one of the most unusual I've run across. So few books veer off the beaten path, but the few that do pack a wallop. Don't miss this one. Also recommended: THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD
Rating:
Summary: Very Intriguing!
Review: I think this book is excellent. But you definitely have to take your time while reading it. I read other reviews and one in particular criticized the book for not being "factual"...But the book is "a novel" in essence it is "fiction" so while the characters may not have really existed or even the historians, he cited...the story is based on a true piece of American History. It is no different than any other fiction novel based on American history. So I don't see the point in that arguement. Anyway, I say "Good job, Mr. Jones!"
Rating:
Summary: Deserving of the Pulitzer
Review: It is a weighty subject. Still, Edward Jones tackles the issue of black-owned slaves in pre-Civil War Virginia in thoughtful, immensely readable prose. This book is a true page-turner.
Rating:
Summary: Bad choice for awards
Review: I found this book poorly written. It dragged on with too many characters that I lost track of and of who belonged to whom. Boring! I was very disappointed.
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