Books I've Read:Property by Valerie Martin

In Property, a book by the excellent writer Valerie Martin (The Confessions of Edward Day, Italian Fever), the author describes the state of women as possessions at the time of slavery in the United States. She offers an original slant in her dive into a white female slave-owner’s psyche and situation as this woman, Manon, tells her life story, interweaving it with her relationships with her black female slave, Sarah. While Manon tries to release herself from the greedy possession of her husband’s hold, she is unaware of repeating the pattern of ownership and property in her own connection with Sarah. She goes as far as seeing Sarah as her enemy due to the abusive sexual behavior of her own husband, although neither she nor the slave have any power to confront and resist him. The author doesn't give us any easy solutions, only a view of the meaning of human property and how it destroys lives. We learn about both women only through her eyes, and the gap between what she tells and what the reader can read out of it is more meaningful than the related facts.

The book is slim, well-written and fast going. 

Property on powells

Property on Amazon