I'm likely the last human alive to read Percival Everett's re-writing of Twain's masterpiece. Fortunately, everything I heard about it is true. The novel is smart, funny, deep, and just plain great entertainment, regardless of whether you remember the original very well or not.
Part one of the novel (roughly 2/3rds) is roughly what I would have expected upon hearing the premise. It sticks relatively closely to Twain's plot, but tells the same story from Jim's perspective. It's a clever enough trope, but the real delight is in Everett's masterful execution of it. Here, Jim is not only human being from the outset (something he can only grow into in Twain's telling) but he's sardonically literate to the point of being erudite. Twain's thick negro dialect is recast as a put-on invented by slaves to keep white people imaging they're simple fools. The titular 'adventures' of Huckleberry Finn that occupy the bulk of Twain's lazily floating novel are immediately converted into the terrors of Escaped-slave Jim, who now finally gets to tell his own story, rather than being forced to entrust it to a well meaning white man.
I won't spoil parts 2 and 3 by giving away Everett's twist, except to say that his ending has all the power of Twain's, and is a good deal less open to misinterpretation. Go read it.
