A High Wind in Jamaica

A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes,  may be the worst book I read in the last year.  It is a long, pompous, disjointed, boring story about a group of children in the 1800’s who wind up on one of the last pirate ships roaming the Caribbean.   While I thought this would open up all sorts of possibilities for adventure or at least entertainment, it offered neither.  I know I’ve said it before but don’t write an adventure unless you put some adventure into the story.  It is truly horrible.

None of the story happens to the children or to the pirates on purpose.  It all seems rather accidental.  While that may mirror real life, it gives the book less of a plot than a feeling of “This happened…and then this happened…and then something else happened…here’s another thing happening…the end.”

As for the characters, the children are all rather dismal and the author doesn’t give any of them enough personality to really tell them apart from one another.  The pirates come off as complete idiots but I don’t know if that was the author’s intent or not.  Hughes tries to give some insight into the minds of children but it seems obvious to me that he has none to give.  The editor’s preface says that Hughes had no children at the time of the writing and seems to think that actually helped with his writing process.  (He had also never been to Jamaica until sometime after writing the book.)  I assume Hughes had never heard the expression “Write what you know.”

The dialogue is dull and confusing and the exposition is immediately forgettable.  It took Hughes three years to write A High Wind in Jamaica.  As it is one of the shorter books in our list, I cannot fathom what took him so long.   It’s one of the few books that made me think “I could write a better story than this.”  Yet, I don’t.

A High Wind in Jamaica was controversial when published in 1929 as it seemed to contradict the notion of the inherent goodness and decency of British children.  Murder, (implied) sex and corruption are all pressed onto the children with little ill effect to most, although one of them might be pregnant and is most likely insane by the end.  I imagine it was quite shocking in its day.  If that’s what made it a good book back then, I can only say it did not age well.

The editor also says, It is edifying to compare A High Wind in Jamaica with two other modern books about children, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  Yes, for me it is.  I say don’t read any of them.  Go read Treasure Island instead.

Next week…Sandra read's The Sheltering Sky