The Confessions of Frannie Langton: A Novel Paperback – June 23, 2020

The Confessions of Frannie Langton“A startling, compelling historical debut novel. . . should be on top of your vacation reading pile.” -The Washington PostI am at a loss for words at how amazing this novel was. I finished this book in two days because I could barely put it down. I had to finish and find out all the details.This novel starts out with a murder of Frannies employer and his wife. Frannie was a former slave turned house maid turned scribe. She remains adamant that she did not murder the wife, Madame, who we come to learn is a huge part of Frannies life. This novel follows the written confessions of Frannie and describes in detail all the trials and tribulations she had to deal with in her life. I felt terrible for the things she went through in her younger years, as well as the game Madame played with her like she was some rag doll to be played with. Frannie was an extremely brave soul throughout this whole ordeal and I understand why she did the things that she did.When I first received this book, I wasn’t aware of the love story that was embedded within , which was a nice added addition. Although I didn’t agree with the way Madame treated Frannie, I really felt the love Frannie felt for Madame.With Frannie confessing all she does, it may indicate her but also will show all the crimes committed by the others in this novel and that is what really matters. Revenge is sweet and everyone needs to pay for their sins. This was a very powerful novel and will definitely make you think!

Genre: Historical FictionPublisher: Harper CollinsPub. Date: May 21, 2019Martie's Rating: 3 1/2 StarsThis novel is good, unusual, but not unusually good, although it could have been. There may be too much going on, which I will get to, but at its center is a gripping narrative about a female servant in England who was a former Jamaican slave. In 1826, she is accused of the brutal double murder of her employer and his wife, George and Marguerite Benham. The first half of the tale is written so well. We meet Frannie in jail writing her life’s story. She was born on a West Indian plantation whose master, John Langton, is a sadist. (Spoiler: She is her master’s bastard daughter). As a child, she was taught to read and write. She grows to be highly self-educated.The reason for her literacy was for her to participate in and take notes on her master’s pseudoscience experiments. Langton is studying racial differences. He is trying to prove that blacks are not human. He uses skulls, blood, and skin samples from dead as well as live slaves. The author chooses to leave out, what could be barbaric descriptions. You will read about a baby being used as a research subject. Rather than focusing on what is being done to the infant, Collins writes about the child’s desperate mother scratching on the outside of the locked room. Or, that Frannie knows that the woman will be sold in the near future. Less gore can equal more horror. In the endnotes, the author cites “Medical Experimentation and Race in the Atlantic World.” The author's research charges these scenes with a terrible plausibility.During the trial of the “The Mulatta Murderess,” Frannie is asked why she didn’t just leave England. By then, slavery was illegal in Great Britain. Her reply is heartbreaking: No one told her that she could. It is this style of understated writing that packs the strongest punch. If the author would have stayed with this theme, this could have been an unusually good story, different from other historical novels on the subject of slavery. This is shown through Frannie's narrative, “…no doubt you think this will be one of those slave histories…with misery and despair. But who’d want to read one of those?...What no one will admit about anti-slavers is that they’ve all got a slaver’s appetite for misery…And, for all their talk of men as brothers, most of them stared at me as if I had two heads.”In the second half of the book, Frannie is a lady’s maid to a wealthy Georgian couple who live in London. Here is where the story’s pacing becomes uneven with way too many subplots. It is easy to become less invested in the character because the story is all over the place. You will read about betrayal, murder, lesbian love, drug addiction, and a whorehouse devoted to spankings. The punch is muted, but not completely gone. It is impossible not to be swept away from a story with such concise and powerful writing. “My intentions in writing my jailhouse musings ...it's my life, I want to assemble the pieces of it myself…For every crime, there are two stories, and that an Old Bailey trial is the story of the crime, not the story of the prisoner. That story is the one only I can tell." The writing’s strength is reason enough to recommend the novel.I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't absolutely love it because it was a very slow read for me. I really took longer than expected to finish this book. At some points I didn't care what happened next as I was a little fed up with the repetition and delay tactics. The book could have ended 50 pages earlier. Frannie was a hard character to like and I just didn't like her. The story was interesting and I liked how she moved between her time in Jamaica and her time in London. Frannie was naive and not very street savvy thus she did not exercise good judgement. Additionally, some of Frannie's encounters didn't seem realistic for a slave/black person in London after the abolition of slavery. I would still recommend it because it was interesting at some parts and coming on to the end I got a little bit more invested in the story.

My aunt who is well into her eighties listened to the audio version of this book read by the author herself. She recommended it to me in a way that moved me to buy it immediately on kindle. From the first pages I was captivated. Not only the story itself took a hold on me. The writer’s powers of description are entrancing in themselves - no matter whom or what she is bringing to life on the page. I would warmly recommend this to anyone who cares about the way a story is told as much as the story itself.

I think debut novels are my jam. This novel is a dark look at slavery, freedom, racism and justice in the 19th century. Yes it is an ambitious project but this is so well written and worth a revisit.In this novel, Sara Collins, a lawyer, uses the trial of Frannie Langton for the murder of the Bentham spouses as a means to recast a look at slave narratives. Frannie is unreliable narrator who spins out her story in fits. Throughout the tale I was reminded of London as beautiful on the surface but foggy and ugly beneath the surface. Frannie takes us from Paradise, a plantation in Jamaica to the flight to London and through to this fated trial. Sara makes us reconsider the value and worth of slave narratives of that time. Does this fit the mould? It is obvious a great deal of research went into this book. And she deals with tropes that we know well from that time period- the mad scientist, the angry black woman, the happy-go-lucky black man. Then she tosses in gender roles and justice system for a black woman. And surprisingly it all works in the end. I can’t wait to see what this author provides in her next project. Definitely worth the initial hype.

Received used/old book. There were fingerprints on book cover :/

A very good plot even if nothing new as Alias Grace and Jean Rhys had partly done the job before but really pleasant to dive in the fiction. Took my mind to another time and place and that was really good.

I loved, loved, loved this book. Collins' writing is superb--it was not possible to get through a page without having to reread a line that was a terrific turn of phrase or a provocative statement or a profundity that required some thought. For me, it was a page turner right from the start, and the last few pages were especially wonderful. Even her notes at the end of the novel were so interesting. May she please write another novel very, very soon.

One of the best books I've read this year! Very well written and researched. Definitely deserves five stars, loved it.

The Confessions of France Langton is a compelling and interesting historical novel set in the early nineteenth century. The book opens with Frannie in the dock of The Old Bailey accused of murdering her master and mistress, George Benham and Marguerite Benham. Since her arrest Frannie has not spoken about that night as she can’t remember what happened. Whilst in her prison cell she writes down her confessions, her life story, in the form of a letter to her lawyer, John Pettigrew. It is this letter that makes up the majority of the book, with Frannie narrating her story from a young girl in Paradise, Jamaica to her becoming a maid at the Benham’s in London and the events of that terrible night. A deeply moving story, shocking in parts, this is an engaging and immersive read.There is no doubt that Frannie is the heroine of this book, and one you can’t help but admire. As she tells her story you become invested in her, and as the plot moves towards the murder charge you will the outcome to be not guilty. Paradise was the plantation she was brought up on in Jamaica, but it was no paradise for her, the other slaves or in fact the owners. Frannie was a mulatta, her mother a black slave and her father, the owner of the plantation John Langton. This puts her in a strange position on the plantation, she is neither one thing or another. Taken on as a house slave due to her father she is not trusted by the other slaves, but in the house she is a slave to her mistress and Langton. This is a situation that seems to follow her around; at the Benhams she becomes a ladies maid to Maurgerite Benham where the other servants are mistrustful of her, but Mr Benham sees as a servant. Throughout her life she seems to occupy a grey area as she is educated by her father, an intelligent woman who can read and write, but ultimately seen as a heathen due to the colour of her skin. In every book there is a villain, and in this book there are two; John Langton and George Benham. As a child they used Frannie as an experiment to see if these heathens could be educated, and then used her abilities to help with their experiments, to their benefit.Sara Collins has a wonderful writing style that makes this book flow beautifully and a pleasure to read. The historical detail is brilliant, and this detail is carried on to the very different settings in the book, the heat and dryness of Paradise to the cold, wet and dark city of London. The characters are richly drawn and have a gritty realism to them making them very believable, especially the rawness and honesty of Frannie. The tension is kept throughout as Frannie slowly reveals her story, and the build up to the murder and the huge question of what happened that terrible night and was Frannie capable of murder.The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a rich and detailed historical novel, that is written with great thought and understanding. Frannie’s story is one of hardship, difference, strength, love and sadness, where she is treated as a commodity and a possession at the hands of white men. As a debut novel this is stunning and I can’t wait to read Sara Collins next novel; a wonderful read.