The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Frannie Langton (slave, servant, Lady’s maid, whore) finds herself on trial for the murder of her Master and Mistress with no memory of the fateful night. This book is written in the form of her confession that chronicles the story of her life, right from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the streets of London. The many layers of Frannie’s character and her relationship with her Mistress are the two things that are going to stay with me, along with the harrowing descriptions of the atrocities committed on black people on plantations in the name of scientific experiments. It would have been a five-star read but the writing was a little slow for me and the narrative style left me a little confused, as I tried to piece the facts of the mystery together.

3 or 3.5 I don’t fully understand the point of this book— I think I went in expecting one thing and was a bit disappointed when I got another, but that’s more on me, I suppose. I probably would have given this 4 stars if not for my problems with the writing at times. It could get very flowery, and while all the similes, metaphors, and turns of phrases were beautifully written, it was just too crowded. Less can be more. There were also instances where I’d be reading, realize something happened, and then have to go back a paragraph or two to reread what happened because it was written so oddly/abstractly that I didn’t catch it the first time. Overall a really engrossing story, I can’t say I was ever bored.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton is set in 1826, with Frannie Langton, a servant, is standing trial, charged with murdering her employers. This book is her writing to her barrister, telling him her life story, with occasional cross examinations of witnesses during the trial thrown in. She tells us her story; born a slave in Jamaica, she is Mr Langton's property, and so when he decides to take her to Britain with him, she has no choice but to follow. We see her starting a new life in Britain, and the relationships she has with her master, her mistress, and fellow servants. And we see her in love with her mistress, how that love is returned, and how she can't remember what happened that fateful night, when she was found sleeping next to the dead body of her mistress. With settings like the sugar plantation in Jamaica, to a gentleman's home in Britain, this is all rife with discussions of slavery, racism, and opium, which you see all through the eyes of Frannie. I thought this was a compelling story, with Frannie as a fascinating character. I wanted to know what had happened, and wasn't disappointed. I would recommend this if you enjoy crime novels, and historical fiction! The Confessions of Frannie Langton is out on 4th April 2019, and will be available on Amazon, and everywhere else you can find books! I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Book UK (the publishers) for this book.

** spoiler alert ** The Confessions of Frannie Langton is one of the best books I have read this year. Reading from Frannies perspective placed me, as a reader, in the uncomfortable situation of complete confusion. This book was written beautifully, making even the most confronting and disturbing situations hard to look away from, her first person narrative forces you to see things as she does. My main battle in this novel is the idea of the “Extraordinary n*gro”, a term which Cambridge is frequently referred to as. Frannie is much less faced with this response to her colonised character, it hit me as majorly due to her gender and the inhumanity that was, and in many ways still is, placed on Black women compared to those in other demographics. The book criticises the idea of the “Extraordinary n*gro” while directly playing into that cliche - I believe that this is a direct decision made by Sara Collins, showing that even when reading from the perspective of a Black woman, we are forced to perceive everything through white goggles. It is almost like her “extraordinary” nature is pushed in order to make her more palatable to a white audience, but throughout the novel is used to force the reader to question: Why do we need a Black body to represent a familiar white experience for us to empathise with them? Everything and everyone is put against Frannie, whether it be her father, her last master, her fellow servants, her own defense team, or her lover. The lover is the most interesting to me, her obsession with the abolishment of slavery makes her infatuation with Frannie seem ungenuine and objectifying, this is made even clearer by the stark difference in her behaviour around people verses when the two are alone. Every decision made by the white characters, whether they be sympathetic to Black bodies or not, inevitably plays into the maintenance of Black being savage. Even though a Black person can be “extraordinary”, they are still considered to be closer to the ape then to the white man. This is made strikingly obvious through Langtons work on Crania, where his work is exclusively to prove the inhumanity of Black people rather than scientific truth (which directly opposes his rhetoric). This book is genuinely hard to read, I had to put it down on multiple occasions because being confronted with the realities of the Black experience in such recent history is mortifying. The idea of the “extraordinary n*gro” resulted in a constantly pressing question of how this can relate to popular media, and the way Black bodies are made a caricature for the comfort of white people. Whether on social media or in our vernacular, much of our social interaction stems from Black communities; whether it be gifs of effeminate Black men or the trope of the strong independent Black woman, we make Black bodies into memes or “relatable” images. The way that Frannie, Cambridge, all maids, “whores” or trophy children are treated by their white counterparts is to keep them pigeonholed into what is expected of a Black person. These pigeon holes are maintained through popular media and the dramatised tropes we use to make Black bodies a comedic tool. I hope to learn more about these thoughts as I read more. (Also! If there is anything in this review that you disagree with or think is out of line, please let me know! I am still learning and am entirely open to criticisms when discussing such topics. I never want to make anyone uncomfortable with my choice of words or understandings)

Frances, aka Frannie, is on trial for the murder of her master and mistress. A former enslaved person on a Jamaican sugar plantation, she was given to her former owner’s business partner (and intellectual rival) as a maidservant years earlier. Passed between these cruel men and forced to inscribe their dictated treatises on phrenology and other hateful race science, Frannie seeks comfort in her employer George’s wife. Marguerite and Frannie soon develop an intimate relationship, albeit one fraught with power dynamics and manipulation. Though she was found asleep and covered in blood next to the dead Marguerite and a floor away from George’s corpse, she maintains her innocence in the courtroom, blaming amnesia for her suspicious proximity to her murdered employers. Her entire story unfolds in the form of a written testament for her lawyer, where she pieces together her part in the murders and her place in the early British Empire. This was a pretty disturbing read for a variety of reasons. It was beautifully written and thoroughly researched, and Sara Collins evocatively rendered the unforgiving Jamaican heat and the oppressive chill of London. I found Frannie and Marguerite's relationship to be abusive and creepy, especially when factoring in Marguerite's fondness for a former Black servant she employed years earlier. There was an element of exploitative exotification to her fixation on Frannie, and it was difficult to read Frannie's enthusiastic admiration for her unstable and not entirely innocent madame. The plantation owner, Langton, is repulsive, and his abusive hold over Frannie both in Jamaica and after abandoning her in England was evident in its traumatizing impact. In the end, I didn't love this book, but I did appreciate Collins' centering of a queer Black woman in a subgenre (murderesses/criminal women in historical fiction) with mostly white women protagonists. Frannie is a really interesting narrator, and I wish some of the plot points had lived up to my expectations. Overall, well-written and understandably disturbing, but a bit meandering at times.