A game of two halves.

I remembered Farnham's Freehold from my childhood. It began as Swiss Family Robinson. Except that instead of a ship sinking and a family surviving on an uninhabited island, Farnham and his family find themselves in the distant future.
Suddenly there is a change and they discover it is not Farnham's Freehold. The Farnhams own nothing. All the land and all the White people who live on it are owned by the Chosen, who are Black. There were a few stories written at the time of the Civil Rights movement in which face relations were turned upside down. I think the only one that has been filmed is Black Man's Burden but this is better. The upper slaves are scheming. The lower slaves are stupid. There is cannibalism and child abuse. So, you might want to give this a miss but Hugh Farnham is an upright American and does not sleep in the same bed as the cute little sterile fourteen-year-old girl his master gave him. I have read a couple of books on slavery recently and whether it is the USA in the 1840s or Nazi Germany in the 1940s, where there is slavery there is sexual abuse.
If you do not want to read it, don't. Penguin is rewriting some of its books beside they might upset people. I don't remember cannibalism and sex abuse in the works of P.G. Wodehouse. But this is a book of its time and it might help you to understand the sixties.
You might think it sounds like one of John Norman 's Gor books. Those are the fantasies of a college professor who writes like a pubescent schoolboy, and not one who is at a good school. Farnham's Freehold is better written and portrays an alternative civilisation that might work.
I had not heard of the narrator before but he does a very good job. He sounds like a favourite uncle reading one of his favourite books. Every character has a distinctive voice.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Brilliant. A book on racism and societal values

Way ahead of the time it was written. this book turns right and left wing attitudes on their heads and chapmpions freedom and equality.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Not really enjoying it so far

I'm about half way through and not really enjoying it so far. It doesn't seem to be getting into interesting areas, but instead is mainly focussing on two interpersonal conflicts which aren't particularly interesting ones. One is with the father who is taking what seems to be a ridiculous and unreasonable stance of insisting everyone else in the group does everything he "commands" without question or comment, just because he is the current leader of the group, and the other is conflicts with the mother who is generally being unreasonably uncooperative and seems to have lost her grip on reality and on what matters.

Update - I have now finished, and found the second half of the book to be more interesting, although less than I generally find Heinlein books. The group become slaves/captives in a quite different society, so is showing various differences and how they respond to the differences. I found it to lack depth and sophistication though, compared to many of his other books.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Classic Heinlein

As usual with Heinlein's work, there is rather too much dialogue, but I remember this book from my youth and found it a wonderful example of lateral thinking science fiction which has inspired my own work.

Racial intolerance features heavily, Heinlein gives us an opportunity to experience it from our own perspective.

I will listen to this book again at some point.

Tony Harmsworth

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!