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I am surprised at how highly rated this book is. Not that I can see no reason why readers might like it�� I can —but it does not come across as a crowd-pleaser. Had I read this book before it became a hit, I would have expected it to be divisive.

The reason being that it's hard to explain or categorise this story. It is a very strange literary book, built of components�� some I liked, a lot I didn’t�� that didn’t really add up to a cohesive whole.

Is it a satire? It seems it must be because some parts are obviously intended to be funny. Humour is highly-subjective and, I have to admit, most of this wasn't my particular flavour. Very over-the-top goofy humour at times. The story reimagines Mark Twain's Jim-- a character who is treated as benign and a bit simple-minded --as a secret intellectual who can not only read, but is well-versed in Voltaire. In this version, the way Black slaves behave and speak is not their true selves but a performance for slave owners.

I tried my best to get on board with this, because there is something quite amusing and satisfying about an author taking the way slavers belittled, stereotyped and made jokes about slaves, and being like ha, joke's on you.

But, then, other parts are aggressively unfunny. Floggings, lynchings and an on-page rape. I remember thinking at one point: Is this the point? Is Everett just that clever? Was he waiting for the reader to have the audacity to laugh before screaming “Oh so you think this shit is funny, do you?! Well, here’s a woman being raped.��? I just don’t know.

And, by the way, I do not think every book needs to have central female characters, but I do think you have a responsibility not to introduce female characters for the sole purpose of them being rape victims. Especially when there are already almost no women of note in the book.

I found the decisions Everett made here curious�� he rewrites a character who I agree needed rewriting, but I expected a complex character, someone with depth of characterisation�� it is strange to me, and a bit farcical, that Everett replaces the stereotyped, one-dimensional Jim we know with another surface level character whose entire personality seems to be "secret genius." Everett's Jim plays a rough-talking halfwit to his white overlords but secretly has dream conversations with Voltaire and Locke. Other than this satirical twist that actually Jim was a genius, I didn’t feel we knew him at all.

And: “Are you referring to my diction or my content?�� is a line a robot would say, not a closeted intellectual.

Then there's the plot itself, the style of which is very much just the characters running from one place and drama to the next. It reads like a series of sketches, some comedic, some horrific, with a twist that I am still undecided about. Knowledge of the characters and general story in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is pretty much necessary for the book's events to have significance.

So, again, I'm surprised this book has been as universally-loved as it seems to have been. A rating above 4.5 at more than 200,000 ratings is impressive, so I guess I'm the problem.