A High Wind in Jamaica (Book Review)

A High Wind in Jamaica

By Richard Hughes

Published by New York Review Books, 1999

$12.95, 279 pages

A couple of days ago, I was stressed out trying to figure out what book I wanted to read next. I just have too many books in my house and on my Kindle Voyage, and sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming trying to pick ONE out of the thousands of volumes I have. Luckily, when I told a cute employee at the local bookstore I was having this problem, she suggesting reading Lord of the Fly.....which I assume meant Lord of the Flies by William Golding. At a loss as to what to read, it sounded like a good enough idea, but I had always heard that Flies was a ripoff of an earlier novel called A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes. So I decided to read this novel before Flies to judge for myself. 

Slavery has been abolished in Jamaica, leading to the fall of the great sugar cane plantations and of the white families that ran them. The big houses of the masters have fallen into dilapidation and ruin to such a state that the setting almost seems post apocalyptic. In this harsh world, the Bas-Thornton children: John, Emily, Rachel, Edward, and Laura,  make their own entertainments and live in an almost Stone Age primitiveness. They have parents, but let's just say they're kind of detached. As for the kids, they love their CAT more than their mom and dad! 

After an earthquake hits the area, their parents decide to ship the Thornton children to boarding school in their native country of England. Their rationale for doing this is that the kids will be able to grow up in a safer environment. Also accompanying them on their sea voyage are two of their neighbor's children, Margaret and Harry Fernandez. 

Unfortunately, they don't get very far from Jamaica before their ship is boarded by pirates looking for booty led by Captain Jonsen and his first mate, Otto. As pirates go, these aren't so bad. They try not to hurt anyone and do not even have cannon on their ship. Instead, they use subterfuge and threats to get what they want. In point of fact, Jonsen's men seem like grown men PLAYING the role of pirates. With the advent of steamships, the days of swashbuckling and daring do are starting to fade, and you can sense that these pirates know the end of their era is coming to an end. They even treat the kids very nicely, allowing them to come on their ship to have food and drink. Due to a weird happenstance, the captain of the children's ship believes that the kids have been murdered by the pirates and takes his opportunity to skedaddle out of the area. This leaves the kids trapped on the pirate ship at the mercy of  Captain Jonsen! 

The most intriguing thing about this book are the kids. Except for Margaret, who is the oldest girl and worries about getting raped or worse, the other kids soon succumb to Stockholm Syndrome and begin to become attached to the pirates. To them, life on a pirate ship is just an extension of their home life, in which no rules applied and they had no responsibilities. In fact, they see their pseudo-kidnapping as a romantic adventure. A lot of this has to with the same affliction that internet kids have in the present age. Namely, they have a hard time separating the reality of their situation from the make believe games they play in their mind or online. It helps things, that all in all, for pirates, these scalawags aren't such a bad lot. At first, the Thornton kids just see the pirates as bigger versions of themselves. This leads to some awkward and sometimes creepy psychological territory. 

There is a really weird sexual vibe at times in this book which led to some criticism when it was first published in 1929. I got the sense over and over that, under the right circumstances, the pirates could have gone through with something sexual with the two oldest girls, Margaret and Emily. In fact, I think Margaret did engage in something of that kind with Otto. And there is one moment in particular where Jonsen has some sort of sexual urges towards Emily, who is 10 years old, but probably does not even recognize it for what it is. 

The characterization of the children is probably Hughes's greatest triumph in this book. They are like barely tamed wild animals. You think you have them under control, but for no reason in particular, they might attack or betray you. On the other hand, they also seem like gods....meaning there is no way the adults in this book could ever comprehend what they were thinking or what whims or fancies they were operating on. Richard Hughes probably could have been a good sci-fi writer because the Thornton kids are as close to alien beings as nobody besides Stanislaw Lem has been able to portray! 

In the end the book came off to me as Peter Pan written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky by way of Cormac McCarthy, which is a high compliment. It works on so many disturbing levels and the book lingers in your thoughts after you finish it. From what I've read, this novel paved the way for Lord of the Flies in the sense that you could show children not being innocent and cute all the time, but capable of doing some very disturbing things. I have also heard that Lord of the Flies does not operate on as many levels as this novel, so I hope I won't be disappointed. In a few days, I guess I will be writing a review of that book as well. 

My Grade: A