The Invention of Wings

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (3 stars, audio, 384 pages)

This novel follows the dual narrative of Sarah Grimke and one of her family’s slaves, Handful. It takes place in Charleston, South Carolina in 1803 when Handful is given to Sarah as a birthday present, and spans the next several decades as the women age, both together and apart. Both women have ambition for anything but what they have. Kidd takes on not only slavery, but also women’s rights.

I appreciate that the book did not try to catalog the more visceral bodily horrors of slavery. That’s the route seen often in books or films on the topic, and while it has a place, it gets a disproportionate share of the coverage. While there is certainly punishment in the novel, it primarily happens off-page. Instead, the book focuses on the mental horrors inflicted by slavery - the day-in, day-out tedium of knowing there’s no hope for change. This is echoed in Sarah’s helplessness in response to her social station, and magnified by a speech impediment. Kidd takes care to not entirely conflate the plight of slaves and the plight of women, however, having Handful openly mock Sarah for trying to commiserate.

The author’s approach was realistically told. So many novels are built around high-impact events that change everything. In this book, very little changed. Even after the important events - punishments, scandals, deaths - everything reverts to normal for the next several years. This mirrors the conflicts confronted by Sarah and Handful. As they push to change their corners of the world, the world’s resistance to change pushes back, smothering them in turn.

At the same time, the decades-long scale of the book tired me. The story might be better told if it were shorter. Large swaths of Sarah’s tale felt irrelevant, like the scandals involving Sarah’s father and suitor, or her endless time with the Quakers. Now, I did not know that this was a fictionalized account of actual people. I caught some name dropping with Lucretia Mott and Theodore Weld, but the Author’s Note actually surprised me a bit. (To be fair, if I had looked at the book in any detail instead of just grabbing one at random, or if I had been curious enough to Google some names, I would have known this sooner.) Knowing that the author was trying to stick close to history may have helped me look past some of the boring bits. I’m not convinced I should, though. 

I would have liked to see more of Sarah engaging with her life’s work by the end, instead of some of the earlier irrelevant stuff. Handful’s story was solid throughout, but I similarly would have liked just a little more from her at the end and seen her life past that point. The voice acting of Jenna Lamia and Adepero Oduye was superb.