![]() ![]() The attitudes of Sophie's family and of their social group in New Orleans are quickly and deftly depicted in brief chapters readers are left in no doubt about the widespread racism of the era. Sophie is being sent there because her mother works and is going to train as an accountant at night, while her father has moved to New York City. They live in rural Louisiana, on property that used to be part of the Fairchilds' sugarcane plantation, Oak River. The Freedom Maze opens in May 1960, as thirteen-year-old Sophie Fairchild Martineau is reluctantly leaving her home in New Orleans to spend the summer with her grandmother and aunt. The second is more complex and much more significant, so I'll leave it till later in the review. ![]() Time travel stories in which some entity, being or force causes the protagonist to go back in time for some purpose frustrate me, as I can never accept that this protagonist is special enough to merit such treatment. The first is just a personal dislike, which I’ll get out of the way here. And yet, for all its merits, I have two problems with the book. It is highly intertextual, and its warning about being careful what you learn from the books you read is delivered in a manner not dissimilar to that of Northanger Abbey, one of my favourite books. ![]() ![]() It offers a passionate but never preachy condemnation of racism. The Freedom Maze is a compelling historical time slip novel in which a girl travels back in time to her slave-owning ancestors' plantation. ![]()
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