Customer Reviews

Any Known Blood: A Novel

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I saw Lawrence Hill on television discussing his latest book, Black Berry, Sweet Juice, and I went online to find it but couldn't. So I ordered this one instead. I was already reading Fay Weldon's latest when it arrived, but the front-cover blurb by Joyce Carol Oates was enticement enough for me to open it right away. Wow! I couldn't put it down. Such a skillful writer, and with such a flare for character development. Enjoyed the book so much I'ver recently ordered two more copies to give away as gifts.

I confess that the only reason I first picked up this book was that it was a required text for an English course I was taking. Once I started it, however, I found I couldn't put it down!
Langston Cane V, a man of mixed race, is lost and adrift in both the multicultural centres of Toronto, and Oakville, one of the WASPiest communities in Ontario. His marriage has failed, he's lost his job, and he doesn't really know who he is. Langston decides to study his family history, and through the lives of four other Langston Canes, a variety of perspectives on black history and culture in Canada and the United States come to light. In the meantime, Langston himself learns what it means to be of mixed race, at once neither black or white, and both. An intelligent look at racial and historical issues, this book is also a well-written, wonderfully entertaining set of stories-within-a-story.
I enjoyed this book so much, I headed out to the library to find Hill's first novel, Some Great Thing, another fabulous, yet underpublicized book. If possible, I liked it even better.

"Any Known Blood" is the story of Langston Cane V and his journey of discovery through five generations of an African American Canadian family living since the 1850s in either the US and Canada. Lawrence Hill's own background provided the inspiration and depth for this multilayered family saga that he weaves like a rich tapestry of characters, places and events. The language is personal and direct, the protagonist's account of his quest interlaced with excerpts from his forebears' diaries or letters and enriched with lively and witty dialog.

Hill's narrator, Langston, recently divorced and having just lost his job, is unsure who he is. He can no longer pretend that his black-white racial heritage is of little importance to him. He begins hoping that reconnecting with his past might provide some answers his search for identity. The story moves fluidly between Langston's present life that includes some minor dramas and discoveries about the previous four Langstons. His father, who had defied the Cane family tradition by marrying a white Canadian woman, is a major public figure and anti-racist activist, as well as a medical doctor in his hometown, Oakville, Ontario. Oakville was once the end of the Underground Railroad that enabled many, such as Langston I, to escape slavery in the USA. Langston the Fourth is a great story teller who has been imparting family legends of each generation of Canes, one story at the time.

Seeking out the missing elements in the father's accounts of the past, Langston moves temporarily to Baltimore, where his aunt, Millicent, estranged from her family for many years, has much to contribute to his search - if she is willing to talk to him at all. "Mill" is quite a character and wonderfully contradictory. She is torn between her love for family and growing affection for the nephew and her rejection of inter-racial marriages and their offspring. Langston is introduced to much of daily life by his new friend, Yoyo, a refugee from Cameroon. The description of Baltimore locales and its people is vibrant and entertaining, Langston's encounters with Mill are quite hilarious. Recording the findings of his family research, Langston embarks on writing the novel.

Historical events, such as the attempted take-over of Harpers Ferry by John Brown, are integrated with ease into the story, as are historical figures like Brown himself and Frederick Douglass, known for their different approaches to abolition. His description of the actual Ku-Klux-Klan attack in Ontario at the time of Langston's grandfather is hauntingly realistic. Details are as factual as possible with Hill clarifying any fictional adaptations he made for the benefit of his novel.

"Any Known Blood" is a beautifully crafted and engaging novel that brings many voices to life, fictionalized and real, set against the backdrop of factual events that shaped African American as well as Canadian history. [Friederike Knabe]

This is an epic tale about a young girl forced into slavery and her life's journey in regaining her freedom. Aminata Diallo's journey spans her childhood in Africa, her time on a slave ship, her growing up in an unfamiliar world (on plantations in the Americas, as a bookkeeper for an indigo trader and finally, as an assistant to the British recording names in the Book of Negroes) and finally back to her land. You won't be able to put it down -- and you'll root for her until the very last page. Highly recommended!

i hadn't heard of this book before i picked it up. i'm surprised more of a fuss hasn't been made over this book, particularly in toronto, where a good portion of it is set. i would compare it in quality to ernest gaines or alice walker. but i guess the canadian market for black fiction is pretty limited... it's a very readable, complicated story that is a pleasure to follow. langston cane's interaction with his own past inspires me to look into my own.

I agree with the previous reviewer; Any Known Blood is engrossing, entertaining, and enriching. Weaving actual historical events and quotes into his fictional tale, Lawrence Hill engages the reader from first page to last. I do hope Mr. Hill gets the "press" and accolades he deserves. I eagerly await his next fictional effort.

I bought this book in Toronto a year ago and found it enriching and entertaining. The reader will be swept up in Langston Cane's search for his family's history, his struggling marriage, and his quest for a purpose in life. Along the way you'll receive entertaining lessons on Afro-Canadian culture, the trials of the bi-racial, and historical tales that reach as far back as the days of John Brown and the abolitionist movement. African-Americans need more "serious" authors who get the press of a Toni Morrison or Alice Walker. Lawrence Hill deserves to be one of them.

I found this book to be outstanding. This book is about 500 pages which I finished in about a week. If you are a fan of historical fiction this is the book for you. Its one of those books you just can not put down. I also recommend "Someone knows my name" (also published under the title "Book Of Negroes" by this same author.

The historic novel is based on facts relating to the slave trade in North America, and the movement after the American Revolution of formers slaves, who had supported the British, to Nova Scotia. It covers the life story of a fictitious African woman, Aminatta Dialo, telling her story in the first person in flash backs. She grows up happily in a small African village, where she learns her mother's occupation of midwifery, or "baby catching". She is taken forcibly from her parents at age eleven. She is marched to the coast and loaded on a slave ship for the horrid voyage to the Carolinas. She grows to young womanhood as a slave on an indigo plantation. Despite the horrible difficulties she educates herself as she is clearly very intelligent. She manages to "free" herself during the turmoil of the American Revolution. She is hired as a scribe for the Book of Negroes (an actual historical document), which is a listing of all the freed slaves who helped the British during the Revolution. She is taken to Nova Scotia, and although living as a free person, her life and the lives of her fellow freed slaves is not much better than her time in slavery. I will not spoil the story, just read it, and you will not be disappointed.

This is an extremely absorbing story, often filled with great sadness, but leaves you with tremendous admiration for the people who were so brutalized during this horrific period. The author adds a section where he explains the historical facts of the time, and notes the incidents in his novel that differed from reality.

I couldn't put this book down. This book is both historically fascinating and emotionally compelling. With a uniquely endearing style of composition, you cannot help falling in love with the incredibly strong and smart heroine. This is a story of epic proportions, that keeps you hooked from beginning to end.