From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

A High Wind in Jamaica

Richard Hughes

Start date: June 1, 2016

Finish date: June 15, 2016

Discussion: Classics Corner

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 352 topics — 11,876 comments total

Classics Corner

* The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
By Lynn · 3 posts · 41 views

last updated Jun 25, 2025 08:25PM

Palace of Desire — discussion with ✴spoilers✴
By spoko · 12 posts · 10 views

last updated 3 hours, 45 min ago

showing 4 of 4 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Oct 22, 2009 Rosana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, 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 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.
...more

17 likes · Like · see review

Oct 24, 2010 Ken rated it really liked it

Shelves: finished-in-2010, classics-newly-read

It starts with a storm in Jamaica where a British family with many children lives a desultory life. Tellingly, a description of the family pet, a cat, being killed by feral cats who give it chase, creates a powerful reaction among the children -- notably, a greater reaction than they felt over the death of an old Jamaican man that they had witnessed. This foreshadows deaths to come, and author Richard Hughes delivers it all in a seemingly laconic and dispassionate tone. For a 1929 product, A HIG It starts with a storm in Jamaica where a British family with many children lives a desultory life. Tellingly, a description of the family pet, a cat, being killed by feral cats who give it chase, creates a powerful reaction among the children -- notably, a greater reaction than they felt over the death of an old Jamaican man that they had witnessed. This foreshadows deaths to come, and author Richard Hughes delivers it all in a seemingly laconic and dispassionate tone. For a 1929 product, A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA is surprisingly modern in that sense, and the message is clear: Children can be scary critters indeed.

I mention the storm at the start, and I might mention the courtroom scene in England at the very end. There's one of many dichotomies for you -- the "wilds" of Jamaica and the "civilization" of London -- but the meat in this stew comes in between, on the high seas, where this brood of children is accidentally kidnapped by the sorriest group of pirates you're likely to come across.

Yes, there's a touch of Stockholm Syndrome at play, only you might well wonder which is the prisoner and which the captor. Violence occurs and you hardly notice the way Hughes writes it. A death, some blood, and my, isn't that drunken monkey on the yardarm amusing! The narrative, like time and life itself, flows on without commentary. That's left for the reader.

Captain Jonsen and his first mate Otto are way over their heads in the psychological deeps presented by Emily, Rachel, Laura, John, Edward, and Harold. The children out of boredom and innate cruelty create their own games. Unfortunately, the adults become players in the game. Though treated well, the children are catalysts that prove all is NOT well, and can never be given the ungodly chemistry between a ship of all men and little ones like this.

That's why Capt. Jonsen decides to make a move, the most daring of his career. It will have its consequences and there will be a lot of irony blown about by the high winds, but readers will be rewarded if they stick with it -- especially if they are interested in childhood psychology and the protean nature of evil. It comes in many flavors, turns out. That includes "cute." ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Oct 02, 2009 Geoffrey rated it liked it

Well, I had heard an author on NPR rave about this book, so I found a used copy and gave it a read. Unlike the other "the raver", I only felt it was okay. I didn't find it all that shocking, as the other author intimated. But it is an interesting account of children captured by pirates and how that unfolds. ...more

Like · see review