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A High Wind in Jamaica

by Richard Hughes, Francine Prose (Introduction)

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 · rating details · 2,764 ratings · 347 reviews

New edition of a classic adventure novel and one of the most startling, highly praised stories in English literature--a brilliant chronicle of two sensitive children's violent voyage from innocence to experience.

After a terrible hurricane levels their Jamaican estate, the Bas-Thorntons decide to send their children back to the safety and comfort of England. On the way thei...more

Paperback, 279 pages

Published September 30th 1999 by The New York Review of Books (first published 1929)

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Mar 01, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nyrb, pants-crapping-awesome

Where has this book been all my life? I've been dreamily gazing out my window all these long hot summers, yearning for just the novel to fulfill my every need—to take me in its sweet-lovin' arms and say without ever quite saying, 'I'm the one. And I've brought the hot oils and penicillin.' It seems a little cruel, or at least irresponsible, for A High Wind in Jamaica to have hidden in the shadows of literary obscurity for so long, forcing me to waste precious hours of my life reading dreck like...more Where has this book been all my life? I've been dreamily gazing out my window all these long hot summers, yearning for just the novel to fulfill my every need—to take me in its sweet-lovin' arms and say without ever quite saying, 'I'm the one. And I've brought the hot oils and penicillin.' It seems a little cruel, or at least irresponsible, for A High Wind in Jamaica to have hidden in the shadows of literary obscurity for so long, forcing me to waste precious hours of my life reading dreck like V.S. Naipaul and Auster's Brooklyn Follies, but why bemoan the past when in fact we're the lucky ones? Some poor saps read all their lives without meeting their literary soulmates and then die with that nagging dissatisfaction pursuing them to the grave. Not me. I've found Salinger, Proust, Bernhard, Krasznahorkai, Richard Hughes, and the rest. (Okay—so I have a lot of soulmates.) This is my orgy of destiny, and the Do Not Disturb sign is on the doorknob.

Just now I said that A High Wind in Jamaica has been hiding 'in the shadows of literary obscurity.' That's not exactly true. It came in at number seventy-one (I believe) on the Modern Library's ridiculous best novels of 20th century list. But still—it doesn't exactly have widespread name recognition like Hemingway, Orwell, or Joyce. It should be just as well-known, of course, but this isn't a fair world. Remember that the Kardashians are celebrities. (That's my current back-to-reality incantation. It quickly counteracts any tendency to expect justice in this world.)

A High Wind in Jamaica is a wickedly unsentimental portrait of childhood and the innocence thereof. It is a needful antidote to the prevailing sense that childhood innocence is the equivalent of moral goodness—because it clearly is not. Young children are largely amoral and, as such, are capable of nearly anything. From the vantage of our adult morality, children can seem callous, cruel, and perhaps even evil. This is a misinterpretation, of course, because they as yet lack the signal posts to act in defiance of a proscribed morality. What they are (to a certain extent) is unmoderated expression. This is a little terrifying to us once we've been fully domesticated by society. And Richard Hughes understands this.

The story is simple enough. In the 1800s, several children are shipped by their parents from their Jamaican plantations back home to London to avoid the environmental and climatic perils of island life. On the way, their ship is hijacked by pirates and they are unintentionally taken prisoner. Thereafter, they become accomplices of the pirates in their continuing adventures. Hughes embellishes the story with an astonishing gift for imagery and turn of phrase and a knack for the blackest kind of humor. I'm well aware that the vague synopsis above is likely to turn away as many readers as it will woo. Just let me assure you that it isn't what you think, and it's probably like nothing you've ever read. It may not be your literary soulmate, but its uniqueness of tone, vision, and temperament deserves to be read.(less)

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May 22, 2012 Nate D rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: bedtime stories for tiny crocodiles

Recommended to Nate D by: an oracular long-tailed mouse

Shelves: nyrb, britain, interwar-maladies

Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" in a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates.
It is true they look human--

...more

Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" in a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates.
It is true they look human--but not so human, to be quiet fair, as many monkeys.
Subconsciously, too, everyone recognizes that they are animals--why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling a human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.
Possibly a case might be made that children are not human either: but I should not accept it. Agreed that their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in a kind of thinking (are mad, in fact): but one can, by an effort of will and imagination, think like a child, at least in a partial degree--and even if one's success is infinitesimal it invalidates the case: while one can no more think like a baby, in the smallest respect, than one can think like a bee.

Beginning this tale of adventure rising out of a tropical fever-dream, I somewhat baffled by Hughes' take on his child-cast, and by why exactly he wanted to write about them so oddly. But really, his portrayal is only odd by comparison to more usual treatments. Hughes actually understands exactly what children are like, and exactly how difficult they are to understand by normal adult interpretations. His entirely unsentimental portrayal is as brisk and funny as it is disconcerting, and both of these sides feel nothing but excruciatingly accurate. It's really quite remarkable that people can live with them around (children, that is). But then, perhaps the irrational and occult world of childhood has its benefits over a rationalized adult world that does such as this:

Trials are over quickly, once they begin. It was no time before the judge had condemned these prisoners to death and was trying someone else with the same concentrated, benevolent, individual attention.

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Jan 09, 2011 Capitu rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, nyrb

We had a snow storm that lasted 36 hours or so. While the wind howled outside, I sat by the fireplace with this book all day yesterday. I grabbed it again this morning and, funny thing, the storm let down about the time I finished it this afternoon. Now I don’t know if the storm was so bad as I recall it, or it was this disturbing story that made everything look so dark and disquieting for the past 2 days.

First things first, this is not a children’s story. It is not a young-adult story either. I...more We had a snow storm that lasted 36 hours or so. While the wind howled outside, I sat by the fireplace with this book all day yesterday. I grabbed it again this morning and, funny thing, the storm let down about the time I finished it this afternoon. Now I don’t know if the storm was so bad as I recall it, or it was this disturbing story that made everything look so dark and disquieting for the past 2 days.

First things first, this is not a children’s story. It is not a young-adult story either. It is a very adult and distressing tale, where children happen to be the main protagonists. Hughes genius shows in how well he captures these children’s voices, in special the voice of Emily.

The most delightful passage in this story is when suddenly Emily realizes her own existence. She ponders further that maybe she was herself God. My son, now entering teenage years, also tells about the moment he became aware of his own existence. He was more precocious than Emily, but he does not verbalize the experience as she does either. The point is, we all must at one time come to the same conscious realization, and later forget it. Hughes brings it back in a way that is tender, but also rings with truth.

Most passages though carry a darkness that cannot be erased very easily by Emily’s existential questionings. There is death, murder, rape, lies, jealousy in every page.

The setting also deserves a comment: although I don’t deny that this story may be historically accurate – I would not doubt that newly freed slaves would not kill their previous masters, be it by starvation or more deliberately feeding them ground glass. Piracy was also probably still very common in the middle of the 19th century. Hangings certainly were, and the inefficiency of the judicial system still is. Hughes’ Jamaica and later London are not the Jamaica and London of this realm, but one from a parallel world, barely more colourful than reality, yet different, more comic or caricature.

It just occurred to me that Hughes might have wanted to tell a more real vision of childhood as opposed to Peter Pan – another English story about pirates. I should search this before writing about it, but I won’t. I am ready to let go of this tale, as much as I am ready for the Sun to start shining outside. I am giving it 5 stars because I think it defies genre and time, but I don’t think I will re-read it any time soon. I can only take bleakness on small doses.
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Dec 30, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'd started this book ten years ago, and though it was short, I couldn't finish it because I don't normally like the sea (or space) in fiction. More importantly, it was falling apart in my hands. Up to page 80 of my used copy was flaking away like a dry piece of fish (again, not a huge fan of the sea, in pagination). I discarded it.

Unfinished books cause one minute of anxiety for: (every year they're not finished) X (the number of hundreds of pages in the book) X (1 + the percentage of the book...more I'd started this book ten years ago, and though it was short, I couldn't finish it because I don't normally like the sea (or space) in fiction. More importantly, it was falling apart in my hands. Up to page 80 of my used copy was flaking away like a dry piece of fish (again, not a huge fan of the sea, in pagination). I discarded it.

Unfinished books cause one minute of anxiety for: (every year they're not finished) X (the number of hundreds of pages in the book) X (1 + the percentage of the book finished). A High Wind in Jamaica sat unfinished for 10 years. There are 200 pages. I had finished 10 percent of it.

So, 10 X 2 X 1.10 = 22. The book had caused me 22 minutes of anxiety, spread out in at least 98 different mind-bursts over the last ten years. Nine times a year, for 15 seconds each--and so a life passes--I remembered my small failure. Not much, but worth allaying.

Meanwhile, Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim is the pinnacle of what I'm calling the Anxiety of the Unfinished. Festering for 12 years. 400 pages. And I'd nearly completed it when I was asked to leave my senior year English Class on account of conduct unbecoming a preppy (sorry Ms. Hannay).

Lord Jim. Also about the sea. 12 X 4 X 1.95 = 93.6 minutes of anxiety. And I didn't know what was happening in it anyway. So, I'm unmotivated to go back in, and yet I know I will eventually, maybe after I've spent a full two hours of light anxiety thinking involuntarily about its tiny, annotated arial, its baffling story-within-a-story, and its troubling imperial undertones.

But, Lord Jim aside, A High Wind in Jamaica was the shortest remaining on the Modern Library 100, and I figured I could plow it in a couple hours, so it was low-hanging fruit (frutti di mare). Low expectations aside, I was pleasantly surprised.

It features children and pirates, but not silly caricatures. Hughes writes things like "One couldn't know the mind of a child" too often, but he does seem to understand the zaniness, seriousness, and preoccupation of his British-Jamaican characters as they're stolen away by rather kindly marauders.

I never really knew who the main character was, and the plot sometimes goes adrift, but the book taught me plenty about kid-mind (some sections are very much like Elizabeth Bishop's poem "In the Waiting Room," in fact -- http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...). There're also an unbeatable earthquake scene and omnipresent British mannerisms, so on a scale from "Dub" to "Brick," I give it a "Jolly."(less)

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Feb 26, 2012 Bettie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: published-1929, caribbean-caper, pirates-smugglers-wreckers, historical-fiction, 3m-bookshelf-challenge, tbr-busting-2012, adventure, classic, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, swashbuckler

Narrator.................. Michael Maloney
Abr/Unabr............. Unabridged
# Of MP3 Files......... 6
Total Runtime......... 6 Hours 13 Mins

I feel this needs a warning because of the way others have shelved this. THIS IS NOT A CHILDREN'S BOOK it is a dark story where children are the focused characters.

Synopsis/blurb: Richard Hughes' celebrated short novel (1929) is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abu...more

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Nov 11, 2008 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2008

“Lame-foot Sam told most stories. He used to sit all day on the stone barbecues where the pimento was dried, digging maggots out of his toes.” When I read this passage on page six I just knew I was holding a champion of a book!

Pirates inadvertently kidnap a bunch of kids that are leaving Jamaica after a hurricane ravished the island. Their parents thought colonial life in Jamaica just too disturbing a place for children to be raised. The pirates soon find the children just too disturbing a speci...more “Lame-foot Sam told most stories. He used to sit all day on the stone barbecues where the pimento was dried, digging maggots out of his toes.” When I read this passage on page six I just knew I was holding a champion of a book!

Pirates inadvertently kidnap a bunch of kids that are leaving Jamaica after a hurricane ravished the island. Their parents thought colonial life in Jamaica just too disturbing a place for children to be raised. The pirates soon find the children just too disturbing a species to be in the company of even when weighed against their own pirate’s code of conduct.

Heralded by just about every review I came across as a precursor to Golding’s Lord of the Flies, this book is by far the most disturbing and entertaining. Both deal with kids pretty much left to their own devices. But unlike Golding’s kids, these children had no morals to progressively lose, no good to measure the bad, no civilization to judge the savagery. Their behavior had the narrator thinking.

“Possibly a case might be made out that children are not human either: but I should not accept it. Agreed that their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of thinking (are mad, in fact)…”

Some of my favorite passages:

… Laura, a queer mite of three with heavy dark eyebrows, and blue eyes, a big head-top and a receding chin - as if the Procreative Spirit was getting a little hysterical by the time it reached her.
-------
Being shot at is so unlike what one expects it to be that one hardly connect the two ideas enough to have the appropriate emotions, the first few times. It is not half so startling as some one jumping out on you with a ‘Boo!’ in the dark, for instance.
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One cannot wish for a more comfortable seat than an acquiescent pig.
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There is something much more frightening about a man who is tied up than a man who is not tied up - I suppose it is the fear he may get loose.
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And my favorite passage:

It was Laura who was cured the quickest. She suddenly discovered what a beautiful deep cave her arm-pit made, and decided to keep fairies in it in future. For some time she could think of nothing else.

And fo’c’sle has become one of my favorite new words. The ‘c’ captivates me.

This was a brutal book, violent at times, but sprinkled liberally with humorous reflections. Hughes was a masterful writer and I highly recommend it. Now I’m off to keep an eye on my daughter…(less)

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Mar 29, 2008 Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics-that-suck, nautical-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 03, 2008 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've lucked into a pretty high number of four-star books lately, but none of them have been as memorable as A High Wind in Jamaica. Ian McEwan, Richard Yates and Evelyn Waugh all probably have Richard Hughes beat for craft, but Jamaica is the first book I've read since Howard's End two falls ago in which I felt something at work that can't be described but with that old, obnoxious and rather meaningless word: genius.

It's not a five-star book because the second half is admittedly less awesome tha...more

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Aug 29, 2008 Travis rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can't really think of a better example of writing that captures the odd thought processes of children. It didn't just make me think that one should always write about children like this, it actually made me remember how it felt to be that age. And the noteworthy part of it is that the book draws a hard line between adults and children, rendering them separate species experiencing the world in a different way, with different value systems, and it is very convincing in doing so. At the same time...more

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Oct 15, 2007 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

...Full of disquiet, and a violence that is all the more unsettling because it is so off-handed, both in its commission and in its aftermath.

The book (which opens with a scene depicting the end of slavery in Jamaica) subtly explores a world in which violence becomes a commonplace-- unremarkable and unremarked upon... where the children mourn the death of their cat, but take no notice of the destruction of their house, or the death of a black man. The book, exploring the imaginative world of chi...more

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Jun 22, 2007 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

This book is #71 on the Modern American Library's list of 100 best novels. My friend Borden gave this book to me because I told him I liked pirates (Johnny Depp). Although the pirates were not anything like Captain Jack Sparrow, this book was captivating. Children are kidnapped by a group of pirates during a time when piracy is a dying business. I have so much to say about this book, but without giving too much away, I just loved how the author distills the romatic notions that western culture h...more

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Mar 28, 2009 Allison DeLauer rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica. Best pirate book I’ve ever read. I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. I almost wonder if the pre-teen girl Briony in Atonement is modeled after the child Emily in High Wind. If so, I prefer Emily’s character. Mostly because she isn’t compelled to spend a lifetime undoing her misdeeds – which I don’t believe was likely – to the extreme Briony did. (For the record, I also didn’t believe McEwan’s character would have been that unforg...more I really enjoyed Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica. Best pirate book I’ve ever read. I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. I almost wonder if the pre-teen girl Briony in Atonement is modeled after the child Emily in High Wind. If so, I prefer Emily’s character. Mostly because she isn’t compelled to spend a lifetime undoing her misdeeds – which I don’t believe was likely – to the extreme Briony did. (For the record, I also didn’t believe McEwan’s character would have been that unforgivable by her sister.) My favorite moment Atonement is when Briony notices her own hands. I tried to find it, but I couldn’t so I might have made it up entirely. In High Wind, the mental and emotional states that Hughes describes are realistically rendered. “And then an event did occur, to Emily, of considerable importance. She suddenly realized who she was…Once settled on her perch, she began examining the skin of her hands with the utmost care: for it was hers.”

Many similar scenes reminded me vividly of childhood – but he angles the lens weirdly enough– to make the reader recall what was once commonplace - as odd and savage. This savagery and gross misunderstandings about the nature of the world / self are always present in the child mind / reptilian brain before shame, manners, gratitude etc. arrive with time and experience.

And of course, savagery and the arrogance of our own perspectives is something we don’t ever outgrow. (Although, a conscious person does their best to mitigate these aspects of our nature.) There is something soothing to me about a book written this beautifully that details with precision the dark beauty of human behavior. It validates my preference for “and/but” instead of “either/ or”.

I don’t I recall a whole lot about Lord of the Flies – but I think this book kicks its ass. I remember a certain morality implicit it that book – and this book won’t offer that kind of consolation. There’s something in LOTF that implies that if the adults were on the island – none of the disturbing bits would have happened. Maybe not – I’d have to look at it again. What’s really great about Hughes’ story is that while it would seem that the pirates have agency over the children – really – it’s the other way around. The agency – and ultimately the villainy is with the wee ones. Isn’t there something to all baby animals being somewhat cute so we’re hesitant to kill them….?

High Wind satisfies my romantic predilections of a period drama in an exotic location– and yet offers something much more juicy than a sentimental romance: a good yarn, with surprising emotional layers that eerily resonate.

I spent the day thinking was it right, what happened to the pirates in the end, was Emily a “bad person”? And you just can’t go there. It all makes sense – as he’s described it – and the unfortunate repercussions are due to the fact that humans barge about with their own assumptions and tremendous needs blocking the view - and when folks aren’t capable or won’t put that aside, misunderstanding and confusion ensues. How lucky we are to have a narrator detail this particular story for us – or we would never have made out what *really* happened. Makes me wonder if some omniscient narrator would be so kind as to tell us our own stories…

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May 15, 2013 Jamie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013

Allegedly a children's novel, this book has an overwhelmingly "adult" sensibility, notably in its chilling interest in the polymorphous eroticism of the child's body (the school of fish kissing every inch of Emily, or her later bizarre encounter with the micro-alligator), concerns of adult neglect, sexual development, probable rape, and the murder of an innocent man by a girl barely into her teen years. If I'd known of it, though, I probably would have read it when I was young - I was onto Steph...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Jonathan Kieran rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was given to me as an unexpected gift by a friend (and bookseller!) who knows my mind and my taste for the surreal, the atmospheric, and the evocative. What a treasure 'A High Wind in Jamaica' turned out to be. Hughes weaves his tale of the Bas-Thornton family with masterful prose and creates from the first page an ambience drenched in sensual connections. You feel the force of the hurricane. You experience the sun on your face through the palms. You taste the dark sweetness of the sug...more

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Mar 30, 2013 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars

First published in 1929, this somewhat ethereal tale is the story of a group of young children who, having spent their early lives (the oldest is 12) in Jamaica, are suddenly dispatched by their parents on a sailing ship (the book is apparently set in the late 19th century) to England for their education and safety. They have had little parental supervision in Jamaica, and none is provided on the voyage, which quickly takes a disastrous turn. The book's otherworldliness stems from the way the c...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally published on my blog here in January 2001.

Following a fairly idyllic childhood in 1860s Jamaica, a group of children are sent to England to go to school. Their ship is waylaid by pirates, and they are captured. They spend some months on the ship - their parents having been told that the pirates have killed them - before their captors, unable to think what to do with them, put them aboard a legitimate passenger ship.

The plot of A High Wind in Jamaica is not particularly important. It i...more

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Jun 08, 2012 David Rain rated it 5 of 5 stars

There’s a peculiarly boring film version of this, made in the 1960s, notable only because it features Martin Amis, then a fetching blond teenager, in a supporting role. Good books, so they say, often make bad films, and this is a very good book indeed.

Richard Hughes had never been to Jamaica when he wrote this remarkably vivid story about a colonial family in the nineteenth century. Jamaica, as Hughes describes it, is a wild and lush paradise for the Bas-Thornton children; but a paradise from w...more

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May 11, 2012 Ensiform rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Five English children, born in Jamaica, are sent by ship to England when their house is leveled by a storm. On the voyage, their ship is attacked by less than bloodthirsty pirates. Reported dead by the lying ship’s captain, the children actually become sort of pets among the not very active pirates. Though horrible things happen – the eldest boy dies in a fall, a female cousin of thirteen is apparently taken as a mistress by the mate, and Emily, the ten year old main character, kills a prisoner...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Robert Lomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle-stuff

I first heard about this classic book on BBC Radio 4's 'A Good Read' and thought it sounded interesting. I downloaded a taster onto my Kindle but didn't get a chance to look at it. Then I forgot I had the sample until recently when, on a long train journey, I finished the book I was reading. I skimmed through the Kindle list and found the forgotten sample. The opening chapters gripped me immediately.

Richard Hughes brings to life a disturbingly vivid vision of Victorian Jamaica as he takes his re...more

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Jul 27, 2011 emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

A confession: every now and then, when telling a story that took place some time ago, I find myself thinking "did that actually happen that way, or have I maybe changed it a little bit over time?" I'm not saying I'm a pathological liar, or even that I have an unusually shaky relationship with the truth. But it is (I think) not a unique situation.

Now. A High Wind in Jamaica isn't a story about an unreliable narrator. Actually, we have a merry, almost-childlike narrator who brings us and the Thort...more

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Oct 12, 2010 Lostinanovel rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 23, 2010 Judy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Adults and mature Young Adults

Shelves: classics, 20th-century-fiction, children-s-lit

I had never heard of this book until one of my reading groups picked it. Even more surprising, I found it shelved as Young Adult in the library. I don't know. Seems to me there are mostly adult concepts here but since the story is about children ages 3 to 11, I guess that makes it Young Adult?

The reading group members' opinions ranged from "hated it" to ho hum, except for me. I found it a great read, totally entertaining and full of interesting questions about child rearing and the uses of chi...more
I had never heard of this book until one of my reading groups picked it. Even more surprising, I found it shelved as Young Adult in the library. I don't know. Seems to me there are mostly adult concepts here but since the story is about children ages 3 to 11, I guess that makes it Young Adult?

The reading group members' opinions ranged from "hated it" to ho hum, except for me. I found it a great read, totally entertaining and full of interesting questions about child rearing and the uses of children in the legal system.

An English family lives in a decayed plantation house in late 19th century Jamaica, post emancipation. Their five children are fed, put to bed at night after being read to, but otherwise are left to roam about having adventures in the great outdoors.

"It was a kind of paradise for English children to come to, whatever it might be for their parents: especially at that time, when no one lived in at all a wild way at home. Here one had to be a little ahead of the times or decadent, whichever you like to call it. The difference between boys and girls, for instance, had to be left to look after itself. Long hair would have made the evening search for grass-ticks and nits interminable. Emily and Rachel had their hair cut short and were allowed to do everything the boys did--to climb trees, swim and trap animals and birds; they even had two pockets in their frocks."

Feral children then, who also read books. Cool; reminded me of my hippie days when the kids ran wild. But then, after a ferocious hurricane nearly levels their house, the parents suddenly decide that their children need a proper education. They put them all on a ship bound for England, entrusting these children to the care of the ship's captain. Now we are really far removed from the present day where children (at least the ones above the poverty line) are guarded from kidnappers and worse.

Well, the ship is boarded by pirates before it has even left the Caribbean Sea, the children taken on to the pirate ship and then their adventures truly begin. From horrific to heartwarming, from dangerous to delightful and everything in between, they learn to climb the rigging, sleep in a hold, tame the ship's monkey and relate to the pirates.

The journey to England on the pirate ship takes up most of the book. That is enough of a spoiler right there because, while reading, you wonder if they will make it. Not one child escapes being marked by the experience, some more deeply than others. My dad used to tell me that a person could get used to anything, which I did not believe as a child, but truly children can adapt to their circumstances, make do and figure out how to survive in about the same proportion as adults.

In the end, I found the story frightful on top of entertaining and interesting; as if Patricia Highsmith got to rewrite Harry Potter. I am still not sure I would classify it as Young Adult, though it is some of the best writing about the minds of children I have ever come across.(less)

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Apr 29, 2010 Bob Arbogast rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was interesting on so many levels, but primarily it was an exploration of the world as seen through a child’s eye. The children’s perspective is so alien to the adults in the story. I particularly enjoyed the sly, snarky narrator, explaining some things and hinting at many more.

I’ve read all the comparisons to “Lord of the Flies” and I think they miss the mark. These children are never savage, they’re simply able adjust to any situation. And the author seems to be saying that children...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Now here is a book I would have loved to admire. It started on a weird, wonderful high note of a lush tropical jungle, and earthquake, and a hurricane. There were a group of children from two different families who, after the damage from the hurricane, were sent by their parents to England. The ship was captured by pirates -- pirates without guns -- and the children went over to the pirates. The oldest boy, John, dies of an accident on land without anyone noting or caring. The children continue...more

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Dec 18, 2009 Christiane rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Disturbing and impossible to put down. The Henry Darger "girls" on the cover are a perfect warning for what you'll find within. On the surface it's a very basic story: after a hurricane wreaks their home in Jamaica, a group of children are shipped back to England. Their ship is attacked by bumbling, not especially blood-thirsty pirates and they are accidently taken prisoners, much to the pirates’ dismay and (ultimately) destruction. The children (perhaps because of their unusual upbringing in Ja...more

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Nov 17, 2009 J. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: united-kingdom, caribbean, off-shore

A really strange novel. And as strange for what it doesn't say as for what it does say.

Safe to say this, though : Richard Hughes is interested in the development of the human animal, and takes the reader on a wild ride to have a very close look at the relationship between self & other, between civilization and savagery, and all the elaborately threaded connections in between.
This book has the primitive and slightly clunky feel of an unnerving account just being cobbled together for the firs...more

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Sep 17, 2009 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

High Wind in Jamaica was first published in 1929 as The Innocent Voyage. It was Hughes’ first novel -- he was 29. As it turned out, Hughes was not a prolific writer and is often used as an example when discussing writer’s block. He would go on to write, prior to World War II, a good Conradian sea novel (In Hazard) and then, in 1960, the much later - and admired - Fox in the Attic. Hughes died in 1975. Fox was part of an intended Tolystoyan-like trilogy dealing with events leading up to World War...more

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Aug 19, 2009 Thurston Hunger rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Art Linkletter

Recommended to Thurston by: Bibliophilistine Claire

1929...so the language has a familiar but foreign feel. Amazingly this was before Hughes had children ;> (I could see this written as a response to the mutiny that parenthood could wreak upon the life of an Artist...as a young dog or otherwise).

Of course 80 years later, and in the US today we get some kind of claptrap like Kindergarten Cop or My Mother the Mafia, wherein the story would be played for cheap laughs and avoid going within 10 nautical miles of a naughty Lolita nation. Honestly to...more

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Jun 26, 2009 Jimmy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jimmy by: sophie

Shelves: nyrb, united-kingdom, male, novel, year-1920s

This is one of the best books I have ever fucking read. Don't even read this review... Just go read the book already! Then you can come back and read the rest of this review.

First of all the subject matter cannot be better: pirates, kids, pigs, monkeys, goats, earthquakes, hurricanes, clue-less adults.

Secondly, it's the language, stupid! The language is so fucking great. Hughes sometimes forms the most un-intelligeable sentences with the weirdest fucking words, but string them up in a way that g...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Janet rated it 4 of 5 stars

In this strange and unforgettable story, pirates abduct a group of young children bound for England– but wait, this is no Disney adventure of a cantankerous-yet-ultimately-lovable pirate captain who befriends and protects impish-but-ultimately-adorable children. Here is a story of deep complexity, layers of emotions, undercurrents of unhealthy sexuality and perversity juxtaposed with (and sometimes entering into) the children’s separate and sometimes fey world. The story begins in Jamaica, in a...more

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About Richard Hughes

Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.

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“Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances.” — 2 people liked it

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