The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party | 
| Author: M.t. Anderson
Publisher: Candlewick
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Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 12733
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 1.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0763624020
EAN: 9780763624026
ASIN: 0763624020
Publication Date: September 12, 2006
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Product Description
A gothic tale becomes all too shockingly real in this mesmerizing magnum opus by the acclaimed author of FEED.
It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them. Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, M. T. Anderson's extraordinary novel takes place at a time when American Patriots rioted and battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated to risk their lives for a freedom they would never claim. The first of two parts, this deeply provocative novel reimagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 A Pox on Rationalists! (At least, these rationalists!) March 22, 2007
T. Burger (Chicago)
48 out of 49 found this review helpful
"I do not believe they ever meant unkindness."
So Octavian says of those to whom he was an experiment, to those who claimed him as chattel, to those who weighed his excrement daily and compared it to his intake.
It is perhaps this book's most frightening truth that he is correct.
Octavian and his mother were sold into slavery in the 1760s, in Boston, to The Novanglian College of Lucidity. These men were rationalists, and sought to discover - once all of the niceties are removed - whether the Negro was inferior to the European. Octavian was taught "the arts and knowledge of the physical world...the strictest instruction in ethics...kindness, filial duty, piety, obedience, and humility," Latin, Greek, the violin, and while learning these things, he was dressed in silk and lavished with luxuries.
Yet we see the detached scientist immediately in his caretakers, as Octavian describes an experiment whereby they drowned a dog to time its drowning, and another where they dropped alley-cats from high places to "judge the height from which cats no longer shatter," and yet another where they tried to teach a girl "deprived of reason and speech" the usage of verbs, and when the girl could not master verbs, they beat her "to the point of gagging and swooning."
And yet they never meant unkindness.
While this is a book of fiction, it is useful to remember (as the author calls us to at the end) that while the College of Lucidity is a fictional entity, the kind of experiments they conducted indeed took place, and the question of inferiority was one that was much discussed.
Octavian, with his mother, Mr. Gitney, and Dr. Trefusis, excelled. He became literate beyond their hopes, and could play the violin as a virtuoso. Without a doubt, his education was better than the vast majority of children his age, white or black. But then the College's benefactor dies, and a new benefactor arrives, represented by Mr. Sharpe, who presupposes the inferiority of the Negro and demands that Octavian's studies be changed...changed to ensure his failure.
As with all stories, once change is introduced, the stakes increase.
Anderson tells this story with a remarkably sure hand, using spot-on eighteenth century diction and grammar as much as he could without losing his intended audience, young adults. The majority of the story is told through the backward-looking eyes of Octavian himself, but Anderson also employs newspaper clippings and a variety of letters (most entertaining were the set from the soldier, Evidence Goring, to his sister and mother) to further authenticate the tale and ground it.
All of the characters are three-dimensional. The plot is handled with meticulous care, moving cautiously in the beginning, like an orchestral score, building with intensity to the moment of change, the crescendo which, not surprisingly, also occurs side-by-side with a telling of a part of the War.
Setting his story against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War proved brilliant, for the irony of slave-owners sending slaves not promised freedom to fight in their stead for the cause of liberty, can be lost on no one.
This is without question one of the most moving books I have read in some time. The character of Octavian is one of the most unique and fully realized I have ever encountered in young adult fiction.
That this won the National Book Award should be no surprise.
Don't miss it August 17, 2006
Leda D. Schubert (Vermont)
29 out of 33 found this review helpful
Read this book and give it to everyone you know or love, whether 15 or 55. It's a stunning, extraordinary look at our own history through the eyes (usually) of Octavian Nothing, an African child slave who is, in this first of two books, the subject of experiments by a group of Boston rationalist philosophers. The purpose of the experiments? For the "philosophers" to learn whether Africans have the same capacity to learn as white children do. Because the Revolutionary War is about to break out, the characters' lives change in unpredictable ways. Every single page of this book, which is told in highly-readable and startlingly rich eighteenth-century language, is filled with brilliance and pain, and there are few characters in contemporary fiction that I care about as much as I care about Octavian. You will, too. Furthermore, there are parallels, resonances, echoes, and consequences for all of us today---your brain will be unusually active as you read, and you won't be able to put the book down or stop thinking about it.
Disclaimer: I'm thanked in the acknowledgments, but this graciousness on Anderson's part in no way affects my opinion of the book.
 I'm a teenager, not a 35 year old April 11, 2007
Teen (Ny)
18 out of 25 found this review helpful
I'm a teenager writing this and I can tell you that "YA" is definitely a misnomer for this book. The language is 18th century archaic-which would turn off all my friends from this book immediately. When people describe a book as "imaginative, provoking, incisive, satiric", most teenagers go running for Gossip Girl. I really don't know why they didn't make it Adult-the average age of positive reviews is like 30's!
 It doesn't matter how it ended August 19, 2007
Lauryn (Ohio)
16 out of 32 found this review helpful
Okay... here's the deal, I love to read. I love to read good books. Our librarian, excuse me, media specialist whatever, at school suggested this book to me. "I don't have time to read it, and I need an opinion. It seems like something you would like. Take as much time as you need."
Believe me, I was extremely excited to read this book. It was different than anything I've ever really read before. So I took it on with great enthusiasm.
At first, I was very intrigued with Octavian and his situation. I really did think that the story was good. But only the story. I was so bored with the book, it seemed to drag on forever. Pages of writing, and I only needed a paragraph. But I persevered because it was so interesting, only bits at a time though, because I could only handle so much.
Then I talked with my friend Katie who was also reading this book. Pretty much in the same situation I was in only a little farther along in the book. She said it didn't get any better and gave up. And that's not like Katie, she reads A LOT and EVERYTHING so I was surprised. But I liked the story so I continued. Farther than Katie had read and farther than I wish I would have read. It never became worth it. NEVER! It sat in my locker for possibly two months because I was determined to finish it no matter how much I hated it. But in the end I couldn't do it. I had moved on to other books and I have trouble reading more than one novel at a time, if I really like one.
So in the end, I say you can try BUT if it doesn't satisfy you within the first couple chapters... don't put yourself through it.
Readable and intense January 3, 2007
Goom'ba
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
Despite the 18th cent. language, the story flows easily enough, what with the weird, playful and horrific characters and happenings in this book. What they do to Octavian's mom to try to cure her from the pox will make your eyeballs fall out. No wonder he was in freakin' shock for months. Jiminy crickets! The last scene with the iron mask and Mr. Sharpe is another hair-curler. FOR EVERYONE. Should be required reading in middle and high schools.
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