Yes, it’s a tale of English children taken hostage by pirates, though a third of the book is devoted to their feral adventures on Jamaica under the loose supervision of their parents and to the aftermath of the captivity, either sequestering in the claustrophobic hold or larking about, free as chimps in the rigging. Of course, this novel originally appeared in 1929, so it may be closer kin to the children in The Turn of the Screw than to Twilight.Īnyone who knows neither the book nor the film version may be wincing a bit. When adults an author presents are simultaneously culpable and vulnerable, it may be harder to make the children formulaic. Perhaps the gleam of hope, however twisted, is due in part that the pirate Captain Jonsen and his mate Otto are adults and complicated in very different ways from the Bas-Thornton children whose adventures and trials drive the book’s primary narrative. The current revival of A High Wind in Jamaica encourages me to believe that we haven’t devolved to a state in which all novels about young people have to be market-driven absurdities in which every character (usually with some werewolf, Pekinese or waffle iron lurking inside) acts and thinks like a pre-teen in a cell phone commercial or a day-trading infant. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (New York Rev.
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