How did she get there? or The Confessions of Frannie Langton

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

This is an amazing and powerful novel, and I want more people to read it so that I can talk about it with them. The Confessions of Frannie Langton offers the compelling story of a former slave and servant who is brought from Jamaica to England in the 1820s and given away as a gift once she arrives. In her new household, her life becomes intertwined with that of her new mistress. She also learns in excruciating detail how her masters in both Jamaica and London have long used her as a pawn. This novel reminded me of Sarah Waters's Fingersmith in its reimagining of unspoken histories, as well as in its Gothic elements. The narrative begins where it ends, with Frannie writing her barrister from Newgate Prison, where she is awaiting trial for the murder of her English master and mistress.

Colm Toibin has said that he hates the literary device of flashbacks, which he sees as overused in contemporary fiction. Toibin dismisses flashbacks as a cheap way to create layered literary characters, but I think a more interesting and related technique is the narrative device of beginning at the end of the book and using the rest of the narrative to explain how we got there. I'm thinking of Celeste's Ng's Everything I Never Told You, Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account, Ruth Ware's The Turn of the Key, and many others. When well-crafted, as in the previous examples, this strategy can create layered narratives with lots of momentum because, as a reader, you want to know what happened.

Collins uses this narrative technique (framing? Is there a term for what I'm describing or should I make one up?) to great effect, creating tension and suspense. Frannie's "confessions" are more than the backstory of a violent night, and Frannie's story amply justifies the rage that she feels toward those who've used her for their own ends and made her endure and be complicit in horrors.  I don't want to give away any key details, but Frannie's anger is well earned and reinforced by Collins's narrative.

Overall, this is an intense and absorbing novel that offers a devastating meditation on the historical nature of freedom for people of color both in Jamaica and in England. I thoroughly recommend it.

If you've read The Confessions of Frannie Langton, let me know what you thought in the comments or tweet me @sigcordell.

I was provided an ARC of this novel by Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.