I read this book as part of my James planned year of reading – James by Percival Everett. James was the best book I read last year and so I decided to read Huckleberry Finn and then other books by Everett. I would have chosen a biography or autobiography about Everett but none has been written – yet.

First let me be clear: you can read James without knowing anything about Huck Finn. The book stands on its own and is still powerful, but . . . if you read Huck as well, you can find the overlapping elements and identify what Everett has done in writing the book. I am not going to go over all the things that have previously been written about this book – just some of them! Those things that stood out for me.

The book is about racism, identity, freedom and is also a coming-of-age story but the first thing that struck me was the role of the river in the book.

It is a great way to structure a story and to keep it moving – move on down the river. Huck and Jim were not totally in control of their journey but felt free when they were on the river. Only when they came ashore did they meet trouble – King and Earl the conmen, people hunting them and guardians wanting to ‘sivilize’ Huck as well as his father. For Jim it was the splitting up and selling of his family that drove him to the river. It provided hiding places for the escapees and provided food and shelter.

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

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It is also as Huck and Jim flow down the river that Huck starts to understand that Jim, a Black slave, has thoughts and feelings like White people and eventually decides to stop playing tricks on him such as hiding or pretending to take the raft off on his own. This understanding of slaves as people is slow to develop but does so as they move further down with the adventures becoming more and more extraordinary. Freedom comes with responsibilities and Huck learns that he must make his own decisions about Jim and that might mean going against what most of society thinks.

The second element was the use of language, in particular dialect, to denote class and position in society. We have the formal language of Miss Watson and her sister representing the civilised element of society and of education and, also, the people who oppress others. There is Huck’s way of talking and the fact that he is a child and so does not understand every word that is used by others. He also has his own definitions of some words such as ‘borrow’ where he ‘borrows’ a watermelon or steals it. His father’s definition of ‘borrowing’ is that you intend to pay it back at some point but as we all know, that never happens.

It was also interesting that when Huck had to swear on a book you imagine it to be a bible but in fact was a dictionary and so he felt able to say things that might not be true. There is an incident towards the start of the book where Huck’s father wanted to whip the learning out of Huck – he had too much and it was to his detriment.

Finally, there is the way that Jim speaks – shown as uneducated, if not a little simple based on folklore and myths. This is definitely one area where Everett provides a different understanding in James.

The names of some of the characters are interesting such as duke and earl, a hark back to aristocratic society in England. It is always said that Americans love an English accent and royalty (Megan and Harry may change this!) and so the two conmen manage to fleece dozens of their fellow countrymen as they travel down the river with Huck and Jim. They prove that the use of language, and accent, are ways of conning people back when this book was written and we know it still to be true nowadays.

I struggle to understand why this book is classed as a book for children. I suppose it depends upon the age that it is read at and whether it is ‘taught’. Would children of any age see it as a satire?

It is, however, a window into the ways of thinking and attitudes of a time but also timeless in that some of these may still be present in society today.