Because this is a Percival Everett novel, we are not surprised that he tears down and rebuilds a cultural landmark ... Because this is a Percival Everett novel, too, it luxuriates in language. Everett, like Twain, is a master of American argot; he is the code switcher’s code switcher. In James, he puts his skills to incandescent use ... What sets James above Everett’s previous novels, as casually and caustically funny as many are, is that here the humanity is turned up — way up. This is Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful. Beneath the wordplay, and below the packed dirt floor of Everett’s moral sensibility, James is an intensely imagined human being ... My ideal of hell would be to live with a library that contained only reimaginings of famous novels. It’s a wet-brained and dutiful genre, by and large...James is the rarest of exceptions. It should come bundled with Twain’s novel. It is a tangled and subversive homage, a labor of rough love ... Everett shoots what is certain to be this book’s legion of readers straight through the heart.
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