Review: Museum of Human Beings by Colin Sargent
Museum of Human Beings
by Colin Sargent
While leading Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their famous expedition, the Shoshone woman Sacagawea gave birth to a son. This child, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, became the youngest member of the expedition as his mother carried him on her back through many dangers. Colin Sargent has pulled this child - usually regulated to a footnote in a book about Lewis, Clark or his famous mother - out of the past and written Baptiste’s life story in his first novel.
Sargent follows the skeleton of facts that are known about Baptiste’s life. He grew up under the care of William Clark after the death of his mother, traveled to Europe with a nephew of King Fredrick I and showed a talent for learning languages. After several years Baptiste returned to his homeland and took up his father’s trade of trapping, and retreated into the American wilderness.
These bare bones give the author plenty of wiggle room, and Sargent decides to make his book another voyage of discovery, but while Sacajawea traveled across land Baptiste struggles on a quest for identity and self. Raised by Clark and given a classic European education, Baptiste does not fully identify with other Native Americans but he is not allowed to embrace the world of the white man.
Sargent’s strengths in realizing the character of Baptiste are tempered by his decision not to develop the rest of the cast. Some of the other characters, like Duke Paul, the man who decides to bring Baptiste to Europe, are little more than 2-D caricatures. Others, like Baptiste’s little sister Lizette, simply don’t appear for more than a few pages, so we never learn much about them. Part of the problem is the size of the cast; over the course of a lifetime there are going to be many people who don’t amount to more than a few sentences. A lot of “celebrity” faces pop up, like Beethoven and Washington Irving; I suppose it is possible that Baptiste could have met a great composer like Beethoven, but it seems improbable at the very least.
The writing style is easy to read, but at times it seems quite choppy. The plot tends to jump from one scene to the next, sometimes skipping years, but there seems little rhyme or reason as to how Sargent picked which moments of Baptiste’s life to write about. At times this book is also quite brutal and graphic. Duke Paul takes advantage of Baptiste’s ignorance of European products and culture to drug him, rape him, and keep him subservient. He does not shy away from showcasing the harsh treatment of Native people at the hands of the whites.
It’s an interesting book, and was quite entertaining to read. But it’s not something I would pick up for a second perusal.
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