The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph is a real historical person's fictionalized life story. In 1746 London, society nor roaming the streets wasn't safe for a young Black man. Charles Ignatius Sancho must wearily navigate the streets after being chased by slave catchers who would send any non-white person to the West Indies to work. He manages to get away and is saved by a kind duke who takes an interest in him. Charles is indebted to the duke as he opens Charles's world to new experiences and teaches Charles how to read. Charles goes from being a person who is kept for entertainment purposes to meeting the king and becoming the first Black person to vote.
The book is narrated through Charles’s journal entries to his son in the future. The book started out interesting as I didn’t realize that Charles was a real person. However, I found the narration hard to get into. I felt lost and had to re-read the same sentence a few times. I also didn’t like that the author would hint at things but not explain them in more detail. Some of the events that happened during “specific life chapters” seemed that they didn’t happen around the same time as the time that particular chapter was supposed to be about. I didn’t bond with Charles in general and found the story to be very boring and, at times, pretentious. I read more than half of the book before deciding this wasn’t for me and stopped reading. I would be open to learning more about Charles Ignatius Sancho, but I won’t give this dry book another chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment