If an entire nation can seek its freedom, why not a girl?

Chains is the heartbreaking story of a thirteen year-old African slave, Isabel, who battles for freedom for her and her sister, Ruth. When the mother of Isabel and Ruth dies, the only hope they have is that the owner they are left with promises them freedom in her will. However, tragedy strikes at the funeral when they are shoved into the hands of the woman’s only relative. Despite their cries, this man ignores his relative’s promises and cruelly sells the girls on to a wealthy American couple. Isabel is in tears as she and her little sister are shipped off to New York.

The novel then follows the girls’ lives as they battle to avoid beatings and adapt to lives as slaves in a city full of rebellious war. I think Laurie Halse Anderson shows Isabel’s pain fantastically. Page by page, Anderson shows how Isabel’s options of escaping are narrowing down, and her hope is too. At times, Isabel gives up; at other times she goes against the rules and risks of her own life to get her freedom. For instance, near the end of the novel, Isabel has been helping people that she shouldn’t, in the hope of freedom as a reward. When Madame Lockton returns home, she knows something. Anderson manages to grip the reader so greatly with suspense:

‘"There you are." The words came at me like shards of glass.
I turned. 'Twas Madam Lockton holding a small riding crop in her hand.
“Ma’am?”
She crossed the room and slashed the crop across my face. It hurt fierce, but I knew not to cry out.
“How dare you?” she spat.’

At this part of the novel, I could not resist reading on to find out what would happen to Isabel and what and how Madam knew. Even though this part of the novel gripped me, for the rest I actually found it quite tiresome to read. The pace was extremely slow and I could almost always put it down. Anderson failed to include enough ‘page-turner’ incidents, and, instead, described a lot of Isabel’s day-to-day tasks and her feelings towards them. A point I would definitely make about the novel is that at times I was utterly confused about the Revolutionary War. I never really worked out which side was the ‘Royalists’ or ‘Rebels’, where Britain came into this and what side the characters in the novel were on! This is partly due to the fact that I know little to nothing about the American Revolutionary War, but I think it was also down to the fact that Anderson failed to explain clearly. It would have made the enjoyment of the novel much easier.

So, although emotional at times, Anderson failed to grip or interest me fully in Chains. Therefore, I give this novel a 6/10.