I've been wanting to read this book for so long! ever since i saw the cover of the Bulgarian version! i'd say it's really good! it's actually devastating how painful these people's past is. especially the part with the freedom trail... i feel like many books about racism need such analogies simply to shock the reader, especially if they are not educated on black people's past and slavery in America. I'm one of the uneducated people, though. it was a huge shock and i needed it. as I'm reading such heavy books such as this one and many more (The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and Half of a Yellow Sun, those are the ones that come to my mind right now but I'm sure I've read more.) I'm still trying to learn and grasp their stories, no matter how hard it is mentally. i mean these people really went through so much violence and death and literary or not, fiction or not - we need to have these books to show the disturbing history of it all.

I'm v glad i got to read this masterpiece, it was really dark, probably not for everybody but it'll stay with me for a long time, I'm sure of it.

i'd say that somewhere around the end of the book though i couldn't concentrate more. it was hard for me and maybe the books with many many characters aren't easy to read for me. i know in this one there is no way for it to have any fewer characters so i can't really judge. i'd even say that it's necessary to have as many victims go forward and be talked about so it shows a bigger picture to the reader. i just couldn't focus on the whole thing in the end and i think i missed some details. thus I'm giving it 4*.

it's a fantastic book, really. brutal and raw. needs to be read by everyone imo.