Product Description

Irish-born Anne Bonny is only a teenager when she is left destitute by her mother’s death. Abandoned by her father, she seems destined to be forgotten by the world. But Anne chooses to seek her fortune in the lush tropics of the colonial West Indies, where she passes herself off as a young man named Bonn. She finds work as a ship’s hand, sailing under the command of Calico Jack Rackam, a notorious and charismatic pirate with a bounty on his head. Calico Jack has his heart set on raiding the Madrid Galleon, the richest ship in the Caribbean, which sails from Kingston laden with Cuban gold and Jamaican rum.

Bonn is entranced by the sea and by the ship’s violent crew, which includes a mysterious swordfighter named Read, who, it turns out, has a secret life of his own. Calico Jack soon discovers Bonn’s and Read’s true identities, but it is only when the three pirates are captured that their darkest secrets begin to surface. In the shadow of the gallows, a strange twist of fate reveals a shocking betrayal that may save Bonn from death, while permanently changing everything she has known about her past and the world around her.

Gorgeously written and full of mystery, intrigue, and startling revelations about gender, race, history, and the human heart, Kingston by Starlight is a once-in-a-lifetime read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130797 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-28
• Released on: 2005-06-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From The Washington Post
Good people, have ye heard the tale of Anne Bonny? The Irish-born lass who bound her breasts, pretended to be a lad and set sail as a fearsome pirate? Who terrorized the Caribbean with cutlass and pistol? Whose trial in Jamaica in 1720 drew mobs of spectators and inspired florid bestsellers? As one of the pirates in Christopher John Farley's novelization of Anne Bonny's life says, " 'Tis a thing . . . hardly to be believed, except that it is true."

Aye, 'tis true. And it would be difficult to imagine a better premise for a historical novel than this story, crammed as it is with real-life adventure, romance and Shakespeare-worthy gender deception. And yet -- mariners, beware! -- it is no simple feat to write a serious pirate novel. The shoals of camp are always nigh. One "Ahoy!" too many, one extraneous peg-legged captain accessorized with a parrot, and you've drifted into Errol Flynn territory, never to return. Still, I set off reading Kingston by Starlight with the highest aspirations, hoping that if Farley could not render his sea story as vividly as Patrick O'Brian, then at least his prose would approach the keen realism that other modern writers (such as Peter Carey and Darin Strauss) have brought to their period novels.

Alas, I was quickly disappointed. There's no question that Farley is a gifted researcher, but I'm not so certain about his success as a novelist. The story is told as a first-person memoir, yet that person -- the extraordinary Anne, who should dance off the page -- feels like an awkward construct. She is half diligent historical reporter ("When night came, for our supper, I would prepare Stamp and Go, which is codfish flavor'd with onion and garlic and black pepper and other spices, rolled in a golden batter and fried") and half shameless bodice-ripper (when she loses her virginity, she reports a penetration, heaven help her, as "deep as powder and ball rammed in a musket").

But there are narrative problems, as well. Anne's youth is skimmed over with undue haste (an unrequited love for sport and a brief encounter with a wolf are meant to justify her lifelong taste for adventure), while the novel stalls a few times to pick a bone about slavery, using a righteous tone that I couldn't believe from this 18th-century rural Irishwoman. And there are other more obvious anachronisms as well -- such as when Anne uses matches, which were not invented until 1827.

But mostly there is all that heavily brocaded pirate prose. Lo, there is much quaffing of grog (including the sentence "There was much quaffing of grog"). Emphatic statements are sworn "by my troth!" or "by Pluto's damn'd lake!," and pirate captains boldly promise, "The men that sail with me shall slake their thirst on treasure and grow drunk with wealth!." and the romantic male lead boasts "a strong chin, as solid as if he had been hewed from rock," and the beaches are "as white as a fair maiden's breasts," and many other sentences that make me want to roll over wearily and say, "Argh."

Yet I must confess that a third of the way into our tale, when brave Anne climbs the maintop gallant mast for the first time, spots a ship upon the horizon and shouts "Sail ho!," spurring her pirate mates to battle, even my half-annoyed heart raced a bit. It was then that I began to understand and accept this novel. It's a pirate story, for heaven's sake. There may be no Proustian lyricism here, but Farley does deliver plenty of glittering booty and growling seadogs and shipdecks awash with blood, and that's what pirate stories are for. To ask more of the genre is to get all fussy for no reason. As Anne herself muses, "Ahh, I am not some philosopher king, given to spending his time remarking and reflecting on the metaphysical and the mysterious; I am but a mariner and I will leave such introspections to more erudite folk."

Of course, most of us are not wild mariners, but merely dutiful modern desk-sailors, who might find ourselves well served by such a salty biscuit of escapism as this. As for Farley himself, he is a senior editor at Time magazine and a Harvard graduate -- most erudite folk, indeed. I can't imagine it was anything but fun for this serious man to disappear for a while into the sun-kissed, reckless skin of Anne Bonny. By my troth, I daresay he enjoyed every minute of it.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Gilbert
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Aboard the eighteenth-century pirate sloop William, officers routinely berated underlings as "sea-bitches" instead of "sea-dogs." For crew members Bonny and Read, the insult was technically more accurate. History knows them as Ann Bonny and Mary Read, both of whom served in disguise under an iconic pirate of the Caribbean, Calico Jack Rackham. Guided as much by his imagination as by historical fact, Farley adopts the perspective of Bonny in her dotage, recounting her peculiar path from Ireland to the Bahamas, where she boldly opts to plunge into the "churning cauldron of manhood stirred by Poseidon's staff." There are stretches of surprisingly dead water despite the swashbuckling subject; Farley's portrayal of the tedium of the seafaring life is realistic but not particularly exciting, and he overindulges his interest in the social history of outsiders, dwelling particularly on how Bonny's extra-dark skin (an invented detail?) intensified her alienation from mainstream society. Seaworthy, if not particularly fleet, this will gratify fans of maritime yarns, while the subversive protagonist and homoerotic themes--they are, after all, sailors--should attract an even broader readership. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Kingston by Starlight is an extraordinary achievement. Filled with heart-racing voyages, exploits, and adventures—not to mention extraordinarily vivid and elegant prose—it surprises and amazes you at every turn. I could not put it down.” —Edwidge Danticat, author of The Dew Breaker

“What makes this different from all other novels I’ve read recently is the writing—superbly poetic. There are sentences and passages that make you want to stop and read them again and again. There are Caribbean colors that will swim through your head long after you’ve put the book down.” —Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

interesting biographical fiction
In the eighteenth century in County Cork Ireland, Anne Bonny enjoys her wealthy childhood until her father gambles away their fortune; he flees to America leaving his two women behind buried under a cloud of scandal and a mountain of debt. Annie and "Ma" book passage on a slave ship heading to the Americas. However, Ma dies on the journey and Annie lands in South Carolina but she has no idea where her dad is and has no inclination to find him.

Instead the ocean voyage fueled a desire in Annie to sail the seven seas. As a female she knows that would be impossible; however being as tall and broad shouldered as some men, Annie dresses like a man. Thus she begins sailing the Caribbean and drinking at taverns in the Bahamas where she meets pirate Calico Jack Rackam who is shocked to meet a buccaneer who can play chess better than he can. She joins his crew as William "a man of the sea" and his bed as Anne. They make a fortune attacking Spanish vessels and are joined by another pirate Read with a similar secret as that of William. All is well until the trio is caught and forced to stand trial.

KINGSTON BY STARLIGHT is an interesting biographical fiction that provides a different spin to the legendary female pirates of the Caribbean. Interestingly the audience obtains the perspective of an aging Bonny looking back at what she considered her prime time. Christopher John Farley provides a powerful, colorful, but tainted (after all it is the cross dressing pirate telling her story) tale of life in the eighteenth century Caribbean.

Harriet Klausner

Perfect Summer Reading
While a pirate tale is not the genre I would usually go for, I picked this book up in haste in order to have something to read at a recent beach vacation, and it could not have been more appropriate for this purpose! Farley's historically-based, maritime novel is fun and adventurous reading with some compelling themes of the often ambiguous nature of gender roles and intimate companionship. For anyone who enjoyed the swashbuckling pirate antics of Depp and his comrades in "Pirates of the Carribean," this seafaring adventure will be a delightful, page-turning read.

Women Pirates!!!
Anne Bonny, an actual person involved in a 1720 trial of Pirates in Jamaica, was a fascinating character born in Ireland. She is desperate when her father abandons her and her mother, and her mother dies on board a ship sailing for America.
She passes herself off as a young man named Bonn,and finds work on the William, sailing under the command of Calico Jack Rackam, a chaismatic pirate with a price on his head. Bonn is entranced by the sea, the ship's violent crew, and a mysterious swordfighter named Read, who has a secret of his/her own.
When Bonn, Read, and Calico Jack are captured, dark secrets are revealed and the book has a surprise ending.
It seems that no matter who you were before you joined the pirate crew, it no longer was important. You were one of the gang, the team, one for all, and all for one, even when the governor of Jamaica had a price on your head.
This was a hard book to put down, even for a 70 year old grandmother!