Saturday - October 03, 2009

 A Respectable Trade

 A Respectable Trade (1995) by Philippa Gregory

Above all  this was a love story and underneath it all it was a dissertation on the elusivity of freedom.  The "trade" in the title refers to the slave trade, specifically in England in 1787.   Gregory did plenty of research for this historical fiction, and her examination of human relationships holds the reader captive.

A healthy perspective on a slice of history we'd rather forget about, the story is somewhat predictable but its bittersweet portrayal of prisons internal and external reaches worlds and time beyond which it all takes place.

Nothing stellar here, but an enlightening and embraceable story nonetheless.