The Invention of Wings

When I began this book, I was excited to see what the story held. I had heard about Sue Monk Kidd from her other books, and this was approved by Oprah's book club. Sadly, not even Oprah's seal of approval can save this book for me.

There are two big issues that stop me from truly liking An Invention of Wings, and that is the pacing and the writing style.

Firstly, the point of view is good, but I felt that it tended to drag at times, especially when we were reading Sarah's parts. Handful's POV is good, but Sarah's are when the plot slows down significantly, because all we deal with is the problem of not being the first female lawyer. Once that is out of the plot, we are left with Sarah trying to find a husband...which, for me, was not very thrilling, and tended to slow the novel down. After Sarah's father dies, the novel finally begins to move beyond a snail's pace, and we get to see what Sarah is like, but even this was not necessarily interesting. This is because, again, we spend time with her looking for a career and trying to find herself in this world where no one wanted to deal with her due to her thoughts on slavery. Meanwhile, Handful is a slave that has to deal with her being a slave, and trying to survive. These viewpoints are good, if handled well, but sadly the pacing is just so slow that I could not help but lose interest.

That leads me into my next point, the writing. While it is fine, it isn't anything spectacular. It is merely serviceable and little else. I think this is because of how the author tells us many different things, instead of showing them to us. The novel is split up into different sections that take plac over a period of months, and even years. We then switch viewpoints between Handful and Sarah. This means that we are constantly being told information to set up each viewpoint, such as “ I went back to Charleston to take care of mother because father died...” Sadly, this writing tended to stick out the most for me, and prevented me from connecting with the characters. This, along with a lack of sensory details, tends to make for a writing style that lacks any punch. If you want to find a book that does this well, I'd recommend Kindred by Octavia Butler. The writing style there is full of sensory details and an excellent dilemma, which I won't spoil.

Then there are other things here that just annoy me from a historical perspective, such as a comment on the 3/5th rule meaning that a slave was counted as 3/5th a person. This isn't true. The 3/5th compromise was a way to count population within the House of Representatives within the states that allowed slavery. There were those that wanted all slaves to be counted as part of the population (mainly those states in the south). Those other states disagreed, saying that because they were considered property, and were not even given the right to vote, why should hey be given the ability to control the house? Instead, a compromise was called, that came to be known as the 3/5th compromise. With this, every 3 out of 5 slaves that someone owned would count toward population. The owners would line up slaves and count every three and add them to the population. Beyond that, they were given no rights, and offered no freedoms. They were used to perpetuate the system of slavery, and nothing else.

Beyond these issues, the book was good, but that is it, merely serviceable, and little else. If I were to fix these problems, I would first work by making it more historically accurate, and cutting out Handful's story entirely and focus on Sarah's story and her fight for Women's Rights. According to the Author's Note, Handful died shortly after she and Sarah were caught trying to be taught how to read. This could be changed a bit to make it more significant for Sarah, and it could change her to want to fight for the abolition of slavery, and women's rights. Then the novel could focus more on her fight for rights, instead of her looking for a husband and wearing pretty dresses.

This novel was good, but it needs serious editing. I did like how the novel showed different positions regarding slavery. It is true that many people thought the slaves should go back to Africa, then there were those who should believe that slaves should be free, but they shouldn't be granted rights like white people. Still, these small facts don't keep me from giving it a low score. I have to say that I give it a two out of five.