The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

Disrupting the reader’s complacency is what Sara Collins does best. Identifying with Frannie, we face the historical realities of slavery, but there’s also plenty of humour, passion and adventure in her story.

Collins’ description of Frannie’s passionate relationship with her aristocratic mistress is only one brilliant facet of this exciting, unsettling book. In addition, there are colourful accounts of life below stairs and on the streets of London, recounted by Frannie in response to her defence lawyer’s desperate plea, ‘For God’s sake, give me something I can save your neck with!’

For me, the way Collins brings a plantation community in Jamaica in the first years of the 19th century to vibrant life is the most fascinating, and troubling, part. Also, the description of Frannie’s early life as a house slave for corrupt Massa and his delicate wife supports an impression I took away from the books of Willa Cather, who was descended from slave owners; the bullying masters could not have survived without the care of wise slaves like Phibbah, who were forced to look after them as if they were babies.

Frannie is taken as a slave to Georgian London, where the education Massa’s wife grudgingly gave her, back in Jamaica, becomes a stick for the host community to beat her with. She struggles through a tempestuous world of cultural salons, prize fights, brothels and cruel ‘scientific’ experiments on human beings, experiencing the heights and depths of interaction with the host community.

In Collins’ stunning debut novel, the dreadful facts of historical slavery are highlighted in a truly original and engaging way.