Negative Positive
Title: Surely It Was Like This
Review: If a novel like Jakes' North And South showed an unrealistic picture of the old south, then this book is its antidote. Slavery and daily life in pre-Civil War times as it surely must have been. Telling his life story as he spends his final days in a Virginia prison waiting to be hanged, Nat Turner reveals to us his secrets and the nature of his mission from God, to free the black race and punish the sins of the white man. Because its violence is kept contained until one final moment at the book's end, it seemed more shocking and visceral to me than tales of mega-death and mayhem so common in other books that chronicle bloodshed and uprising. This novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and it earned it.
Is the review positive or negative? 