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2.0 out of 5 stars
So what? Where's the feeling?, Mar 20 2004
As others have said, this book tries to explore the concepts of women (slaves and wives) as property. In itself, the idea is brilliant. It is unfortunate then, that the author merely skimmed the surface, producing a novel that seems uncertain as to what it's purpose is. In terms of plot, the story was quite simple - Manon is unhappily married, she is widowed and maimed during a slave rebellion on her plantation, and spends the rest of the book trying to recapture the runaway slave Sarah.
This simple plot arc would not have bothered me one bit, if the emotional side of the story had been meatier. Although the author mentioned time and again how Manon felt towards the slaves and her own predicament, it failed to rouse any emotion in me at all. It seemed to be just words on the page. Surely with a topic such as this, the potential was to arouse hate, shock, sympathy, sadness on the theme. The author has done none of these, and as such has wasted a good idea. As such, all I was left with was the feeling that this was an intellectual argument, an illustration of attitudes at the time, rather than an emotional journey. With the lack of feeling in the book, all that was left to redeem it was the plot, and as I have said, it was not very complex. If the book had been longer, with more events, it may have been alright despite the lack of feeling. At the end, I was still wondering about Manon's father's "failing", about what happens to Manon in the long term, what happens to Sarah and Walter. I had to assume their lives just carried on as before, and nothing that had happened changed them. This in itself could have been more powerfully reinforced to stimulate feeling - that Manon is not one bit altered by her experiences. But alas, the book just seemed to end. Full stop. In short, I finished "Property" thinking that the book had not lived up to it's potential. The one thought I had at the end was "So what?" I already suspected that slave owners felt the way this book describes. It didn't tell me anything new, didn't challenge me to re-examine my feelings and views on this, which it so easily could have done.
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