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Rating: 
Summary: One of My Favorites of All Time!
Review: "A High Wind in Jamaica" is quite possibly the best book about children written in 20th century. It's two successors being William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," and J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." Richard Hughes' uncanny ability to lay bare the mind of a child offers continuous, piercing insights unclouded by judgement or sentimentality. His prose evokes the strange, often bewildering perception of the innocent, with an objective, childlike point of view. Be forwarned though this novel is not for those who would dislike spending a day in the mind of young children. Those, however, interested in child psychology or just facinated by the nature of the young will enjoy this rare gem of a book.
Rating: 
Summary: Rare Opportunity
Review: As a single parent father, I've found an opportunity with A High Wind In Jamaica to read a book with my 9 year old daughter. It's an experience we are sharing and yet I'd imagine experiencing independently on two different levels. She brings me the book every night. It's a medium from which to explain some of life's more complicated issues to my daughter. So it's serious and it's fun. I read the book years ago and am experiencing it anew. My daughter wanted it I believe because of the children on the cover. She loved it from the first page. I'm glad I bought it and I'd recommend it to parents to share with their children.
Rating: 
Summary: Stalls at Sea
Review: I came to this book with high expectations. It is not only listed amongst the top 100 novels of the 20th c. by the Modern Library, but is also mentioned by Anthony Burgess on his own top 100 novels list. One Amazon reviewer whose literary tastes I admire also heaped praise on it. About all I can say positively for it is that it's an easy read and flows by rather swiftly. My main quibble is with Hughes' overly febrile imagination. It definitely gets the better of him after the children are pirated away off the Cuban coast. Hughes' depiction of Emily's sexual awakening borders on the disquieting. She's only ten years old, after all. The even yonger Rachel has her upturned bottom smilingly explored by the pirate captain while she is sleeping in a scene closer to De Sade than to Golding. Such scenes are passed off as innocent encounters, yet the underlying tension is not so easily dismissed. Freudians would no doubt have a field day with this novel. I enjoy dark satire and psychological exploration in novels. I suppose one can approach the novel from that perspective, but I can only say I've seen it done much more adroitly than Hughes manages here. He depicts the psychology, without any motivation behind it. That is a fatal flaw for a writer. The overly eccentric children's behavior is entirely enigmatic and uncontrolled, which reflects a rather Hobbsian or Calvinist world view. These are definitely not Rousseau's noble savages prancing about the yardarms. They are feral little time bombs, wreaking bloodshed and misery on the adults who intend them no harm. In that sense, they are indeed like Golding's barbaric little band of boys. They have no internal moral compass, no code of behavior, save what is expedient for them. Even that wouldn't be so bad, if the satire were fleshed out with a bit more more humor, a la Swift. Though some readers found humor in the novel, I just couldn't fathom where. At its core, it's one of the most cynical works I've ever read. It's the novelistic equivalent of reading Juvenal or Rochester, sans the great wit that underscored their satirical poems. Suffice it to say that I won't be including it on my personal list of 100 top novels of the 20th c. BEK
Rating:
Summary: So unexpected: Pirates!
Review: I picked this book up at a used book sale because I'd heard of the name and it cost fifty cents. No one I knew had heard of it, much less read it, but I didn't have too much to lose except a couple of hours and the money to buy the coffee to be consumed during reading. So, out of the blue: Pirates!! Hooray! A High Wind In Jamaica is of course more than just some dumb book about pirates. It was later described to me as a 'Lord of the Flies' on a boat, and I after reading it I can associate with that. Kids and violence and lies and pirates and whatnot, with a smattering of philosophical wandering on the nature of kids in general (mother and father cling to the idea of their kids; the kids forgot about them quickly). Overall, I'd say that the prose sings, zips along incredibly fast (read the book in a single sitting) and is engaging. The author covers deeper meaning with an engaging story and works the two together very well. I've recommended the book to a lot of people, and the few who've bothered to track it down concur: it's a great little book.
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Summary: What a Wonderful, Strange Find
Review: I'll never be able to say the MLA's list of the greatest novels of the 20th Century was a total waste, because it made me aware of this book's existence. I'd never heard of "A High Wind in Jamaica," and had a hell of a time trying to find it---I ended up in the basement of a branch of my public library (I guess I shouldn't be endorsing the use of libraries on Amazon's site, but I can't afford to buy every book I want to read---sorry, Amazon). Once I started it, I couldn't put it down. I'm always wishing I could find books like the ones it seems are only written for children. Kids get great books---full of adventure and fantasy and harrowing escapes, etc. It always sounds fun to go back and read books that enthralled me as a kid so I can recapture the same feelings that filled me then. But it never works. I can never get into kids' books in the same way, no matter how hard I try. "A High Wind in Jamaica" is like a children's book written for adults. It's got all the right elements: tropical locations, a harrowing storm, pirates, murder. But the psychological element Richard Hughes gives to the story adds a dark, brutal dimension that children's books are often missing altogether or only skate briefly by. This novel has a wonderful way of seeing events through the eyes of a child, and it functions as a sort of warning not to forget that children, though maybe possessing less life experience than adults, are capable of feeling the same emotions and, more importantly, have the potential to be just as brutal. In fact, Hughes suggests that children may actually be more brutal, since they have less of a knowledge base from which to understand and weigh consequences. I don't want to make this book sound over burdened with rhetoric and psychobabble, however. It's a fast-paced, tense novel, with a menacing tone constantly present just under the surface. Hughes creates beautiful images of Jamaica in the book's early chapters, and paints a vivid picture of life at sea later on. If I actually had any money, I would buy the rights to this book, because it would make a great movie.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest novels I've ever read
Review: On its surface, Hughes' High Wind in Jamaica is the story of two families of young cchildren, sent home to England by their parents following a cataclysmic hurricane that levels their plantation in Jamaica. Subsequently the children are kidnapped by pirates; the book follows their story until their eventual return to England. The pirates turn out to be, for the most part, well-intended and even protective of the children, but by the end of the story the same cannot really be said of the children themselves, whose behavior at points seems threatening and malevolent by comparison to their captors. Others have made a comparison between this book and "Lord of the Flies," both because of their stories of children torn apart from the moorings of civilization, and for their undercurrent emotion of malevolence, darkness, and evil. To my mind, Hughes' intent is broader than that, and I actually prefer "High Wind" to its rival. Hughes is also exploring a more general theme of alienation and the kind of moral emptiness that accompanies it: child vs. adult, plantation owners vs. slaves, the wild of Jamaica vs. the civilized form of the British Empire, each unknowing and thus cruel to the other. The ending is actually shocking, a perfect end to this highly unconventional but perfectly-pitched book. One of my "best ever" novels.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest novels I've ever read
Review: On its surface, Hughes' High Wind in Jamaica is the story of two families of young cchildren, sent home to England by their parents following a cataclysmic hurricane that levels their plantation in Jamaica. Subsequently the children are kidnapped by pirates; the book follows their story until their eventual return to England. The pirates turn out to be, for the most part, well-intended and even protective of the children, but by the end of the story the same cannot really be said of the children themselves, whose behavior at points seems threatening and malevolent by comparison to their captors. Others have made a comparison between this book and "Lord of the Flies," both because of their stories of children torn apart from the moorings of civilization, and for their undercurrent emotion of malevolence, darkness, and evil. To my mind, Hughes' intent is broader than that, and I actually prefer "High Wind" to its rival. Hughes is also exploring a more general theme of alienation and the kind of moral emptiness that accompanies it: child vs. adult, plantation owners vs. slaves, the wild of Jamaica vs. the civilized form of the British Empire, each unknowing and thus cruel to the other. The ending is actually shocking, a perfect end to this highly unconventional but perfectly-pitched book. One of my "best ever" novels.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book - But skip Prose's introduction
Review: This darkly humorous, gently ironic story is first and foremost a spellbinder. Told in an informal understated fashion; it is a tale of great events and awe-inspiring violence both by man and nature. The Bas-Thorntons, an English family with five children, eke out a living in mid-nineteenth century Jamaica. (Father is handsome, but not a money maker.) The children have an enchanted existence in this lush, tropical, faintly oppressive island. They are busy from sunup to sundown with their own ideas of play, investigation and pretend. Their lives are changed when a devastating hurricane demolishes their home, killing one of the Negro servants, and their half-wild cat, Tabbie. The children are quite calm during the ferocious storm and interestingly are far more desolate about the loss of their cat than the human being who died before their eyes. The parents decide the children must go back to safe Mother England to better structure their lives. Most ships were still under sail at this time, and the children are quite excited at the prospect of magical England. Mrs. Thornton worries that the children will pine endlessly at being separated from her, but in actuality, they are quite indifferent. They have no sooner set sail than they are set upon by some of the most inefficient pirates that ever graced that notorious profession. After a few weeks on shipboard with the pirates, the children are thriving, and the pirates are not. Two deaths, one an accident and the other murder occur though the pirates are relatively innocent of both. After the rescue, the pirates are tried, found guilty, and hanged. The children endure great hardships and shocking sights, and the reader is taxed again and again with the merciless survivability of small children. They resolutely see what they want to see, and believe the adults if it is convenient, but most of the time just plain do not care. Usually, they have other fish to fry. The author is careful with his characterizations treating the well-meaning mother and the individual pirates with same merciless clarity as he does the children. This is truly a classic, and I believe every parent who reads it will have an uneasy feeling of humility at the close of the book. Read and enjoy. Read it to your children and be ready for them to laugh in all the wrong places.
Rating:
Summary: merciless
Review: This is a wonderful book. Short, swift and very bloody, Hughes tells a story of children as seperate from adult human nature and explores the ways in which children can cope with danger and catastrophe in the light of the usual adult nervous fumbling. It is a psychological portrait, but is so much more as well. An exciting action-adventure; an epic on nature and the sea; a ruthless story of pirates in the age of their decline; a terrifying masterwork detailing the lies all people must tell themselves in order to survive. It is difficult to sum up exactly what is going on throughout the book, event leading to action leading to betrayal leading to another fun game. In the end the book might even be read as a comedy--that of a pessimist attacking both human nature and the world--and I must admit that throughout several of the more harrowing scenes I found myself laughing in self-defense. Great, great stuff, beautifully written and compelling. I wouldn't presume to guess how any one individual might take it and that, to me, the unexpectedness of the whole thing, is what constitutes some of the greatest masterpieces. Very highly recommended--
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