Customer Reviews

The Sweet Trade

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How's this for a twist? This heavily gender-coded bodice-ripper about women who lived their lives as men was written by a male author writing under a female pseudonym.

James L. Nelson (aka Elizabeth Garrett) repackaged and rereleased this book in 2004 as "The Only Life That Mattered: The Short and Merry Lives of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Calico Jack", under his real name.

This makes Paul McGrath's hilariously sexist review, well, all the more hilarious really: "The fundamental problem here is that this is a pirate story written by a woman and about female pirates. It is, to its core, written from a feminine perspective."

Whenever will people learn not to judge a book by its cover?

One of the more romanticized villains in history is the noble pirate, the seafaring reaver with gleam in his eye and a heart of gold. Nowhere is this more evident than in tales of the sea queens, the rare but all too real women in pirate's clothing. The most famous of these are Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who sailed with Calico Jack Rackam in the Caribbean in the early 1700s.

Based on what historical records exist detailing their lives, Elizabeth Garrett in "The Sweet Trade" weaves a credible tale of their adventures. The story is exciting and necessarily quick-paced -- their days of piracy together lasted less than three years -- but it's leisurely enough to sit back and enjoy the progression of events. You'll get to know the three main characters quite well, both their strengths and failings, and you'll get a good feel for life at sea at the dawn of the 18th century. You'll certainly learn enough to realize that life at sea wasn't easy, and pirates certainly weren't romantic or noble.

Garrett has a fine voice for narration, and a keen sense of story. This one unfolds with a few surprises along the way, and leaves you with a conviction that the author knew her subjects in and out before starting to write. She might show occasional aspirations to be a romance writer, but those out-of-place scenes are thankfully few and far between. Similarly, the main characters are all a bit too good looking, and the sex is always just a bit too good; I suspect in real life these people stank most of the time and had little time to learn the gentler arts of wooing.

I picked up "The Sweet Trade" because it's a pirate book, and because it features two piratesses who've intrigued me for years. While there are some weaknesses, I read the book eagerly and walked away pleased, quite sated by the experience. I'd certainly consider reading more by this author in the future.

by Tom Knapp, Rambles.NET editor

Just got finished reading The Sweet Trade. Was a little apprehensive about reading the book since I was never interested in pirates, but what a book. You heard Mary's story, Anne's and Black Jack's all at once. I'd highly recommend it. It's full of action, fun, love, humer, adventure, romance and shows that you must follow your heart. It also shows that even though we desire certain things we don't always get them and sometimes have to make the best of what we have and that women' lib is not a new idea.

I'm a pirate fan, so as soon as I heard of this novel, I was interested right away.
It's not the greatest book I've read, but it's definitely worth a read.
My main problem: the wording sometimes got clumsy, especially with the phrases. Sometimes there were too many of those in one sentence, so reading got awkward at times.
And although it IS a romance novel, in a sense, I feel that the characters' appearances (especially Anne's and Jack's) were exaggerated so that they'd appear to be these extremely gorgeous people, when in reality they probably were not.
And I do disagree with the characterization of Jack. I don't believe Rackam was a coward; I lean toward a theory I heard somewhere that stated that Anne cheated on him with the rest of the crewmembers on his ship; thus he felt depressed and that was why he didn't bother to fight justice when it finally reached him, the way Anne and Mary did.
But I liked how the author described Anne and Mary's bonding, and she did a good job with both of their characters. I felt sorry for James Bonny when I read this.
And the ending was so sad. Really, I don't quite think that it should have ended the way it did.
But still, a good book. I think girls will enjoy it more than guys though, since it's mostly about female pirates, and problems that women deal with (i.e. pregnancy).

Female pirates have always fired up the public imagination, and none are more notorious than the real-life 18th Century pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Tried and convicted of piracy in Jamaica in the year 1720, along with their captain, Calico Jack Rackam, and the rest of his crew, they are the most legendary of historical women pirates. In her rousing debut novel, "The Sweet Trade," Elizabeth Garrett plunges us into the lives of Mary, Anne and Jack, threading their stories together in a skillful blend of historical fact and creative imagination.

In a simmering prologue dripping with tropical heat and languid fatalism, we find Mary and Anne in jail in St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica, on the day they are to go on trial. In flashback, Garrett weaves together the separate but parallel stories of her three protagonists, piecing together shrewd and plausible psychological portraits of each. Mary emerges as the true hero of the story. Disguised as a boy most of her life to survive, she has been a foot soldier, a corporal in a cavalry brigade, an able-bodied seaman, and -all too briefly - an innkeeper's wife, before joining the crew on a Dutch trader that's captured by Calico Jack. Mary's stoicism and common sense while coping with her shifting identity and struggling to survive give the novel its narrative thrust.

By contrast, Anne is pictured as wilful, spoiled and reckless. The beautiful but illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Irish solicitor in South Carolina, she has a vicious temper and a wild streak. She defies her father to marry penniless, woebegone merchant sailor James Bonny so she can run off with him to Nassau on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, an infamous pirate hangout and capital of all things wicked in Anne's overheated imagination. When she meets and lustily beds Calico Jack, the famous pirate, Garrett suggests it is only Anne's badgering for the thrilling outlaw life of her dreams that drives him back "on the account." Indeed, this Jack is a bit of a dandy, content "to impress Anne with his bravado and still not have to risk his neck." Handsome and popular, Jack has deposed his own pirate captain, the ruthless Charles Vane, and returned to Nassau in triumph, hoping to rest on his laurels. But when Anne goads him back to sea, he finds a captain's responsibilities overwhelming. Faced with pitifully small trade and smaller profits, afraid of losing the respect of his men and of the hangman's noose that awaits them all, Jack sinks into a downward spiral of drinking, paranoia and despair long before his ship is captured by the authorities.

There's plenty of action on land and sea-a tense battle in a wheat field in Flanders, the drenching, freezing misery of working a ship in a howling storm, the desperate grappling of a merchant crew attempting to fight off a boarding gang of pirates. Garrett also makes us understand how the rudimentary democracy of pirate life attracted so many of the poor and disposessed. But she also pays attention to the things that make our fascination with women pirates in particular so enduring-how these women manage or fail to maintain their male disguise, find their place in the world of men and cope with such issues as sexuality and pregnancy. Readers are drawn to female pirate tales to learn about these very things, and Garrett makes them the centerpiece of her story.

Garret uses a few too many breathless sentence fragments; intended to create momentum, they too often stop the reader dead in her tracks searching for a verb or object to complete the thought. ("The Caribbean was blue-green, a warm and unfailing breeze, humps of high, jungle-covered mountains in the far distance.") And it's a bit of a stretch when she tries to make Mary's sad final moments into something emotionally upbeat. Still, this is a ripping yarn that breathes life into the lengend.

This story of 18th-century Caribbean pirates is entertaining and solid, though unmarked by any particular genius. It struck me as being better paced and plotted than at least one far more heavily touted recent nautical release. Historical research seems strong, and the characters, pirates Calico Jack, Anne Bonney and Mary Read, are distinct and appealing. Action rarely lags, and I found the book entertaining overall.

Detracting from the book's quality was a romance-novel undertone. It's not that there's too much romance per se, but it's graphically described and improbably good. And every single time Mary, who dresses as a man, reveals her gender to a man she's in love with, he joyously accepts her -- this didn't strike me as realistic. I agree with the reviewer who wanted a gritter portrayal of pirate life.

Another detraction comes from the writing style, which is workmanlike at best and occasionally, as in Mary's final moments, downright clumsy. Still, this is definitely a readable novel.

Elizabeth Garrett really did her homework! I have read all I can about Anne and Mary and Garrett sure seems to have her facts down. She gets the history right, and as far as I am concerned, she has the personalities of these women pirates right on. The book is a page turner - I could not put it down. It brought me right back to the Golden Age of Piracy. For any fan of pirate stories, or just good, fast moving, believable fiction in general, I hartily recommend this book.

Well, I must say that I really did enjoy this book. My first pirate novel. How lucky for me it was a good one.
The fact that it was historically based enhanced the experience, and I wish we had more information on Mary and Anne.
Mary was a wonderful character. Warm, wise, calm, caring. She was someone I'd want to know. A real rock. Anne on the other hand was spoilt, impetuous and immature, and continued to grate on my nerves throughout, along with the disgustingly spineless Calico Jack, who I came to despise even a little more than Anne. It's a shame that a book with such a strong sense of plot, such a clever play with time only had a few likeable characters. I mean look, I know characters can't always be likeable. You have to have anti-heroes. But Garrett just can't carry them off somehow. It really is a great shame, and is the main reason I've taken two stars off, along with the fact that the book had a tendency to drag a little.
Otherwise a fascinating, rich and complex work about fascinating and complex people. A worthwhile read.

Note: Letter grades are given at the end of my reviews ranging for A (highest) to F (lowest).

This is the same review I wrote for The Only Life that Mattered, as it's the same book. And I listed the author as James Nelson because "Elizabeth Garrett" is an alias.

Most authors who write novels based on the merry lives on Anne Bonny and Mary Read make the focus almost entirely on sex (see the unfortunate Sisters of the Sea: Anne Bonny & Mary Read, Pirates of the Caribbean). But the Sweet Trade does well for itself by mixing this in with gruesomely poignant action scenes and actual emotional trauma. This is a book that actually paints an unsettling picture of the reality of the pirate life.

Nelson depicts Anne Bonny as a largely innocent teenager who falls for the handsomely deceptive Jack Rackham, a pirate who makes himself look tough on the outside but is actually an insecure coward at heart. Also interesting is Mary Read, another woman pirate who serves as the book's conscience. Anne and Read go to sea disguised as men and serve in Jack's crew.

The characters are so emotionally fleshed out that even when they do something so immoral that it makes you cringe, you still care about them. Rackham, in particular, has an eerily familiar position as the man in charge who refuses to admit he has no idea what he's doing and eventually (SPOILER ALERT!) leads the crew to their deaths. The book remains rigidly true to the history of the real people the novel is based on, and I wouldn't be surprised if their written counterparts are just like them.

The grit and gore, meanwhile, may make your stomach turn, but it's necessary to depict the reality of the outlaw life. Nelson deserves praise for putting the historical facts back in Anne, Mary, and Jack's story. He reminds us that the "sweet trade" was anything but. A-

An excellent read, thought provoking and intense in part,humorous and incisive in other. I would reccomend this book unreservedly to one and all.