Pigeon English

The story: Meet Harry, an 11-year-old Ghanaian migrant who lives with his mother and sister in one of London’s rough inner-city council estates (Dell Farm Estate). At his school, Harri prides himself on being the fastest runner in Year 7 and appears to have settled his new life quite nicely despite the vast cultural differences. The story opens with Harri and his friend at the murder scene of a popular boy who once attended his school. He and his friend then take it upon themselves to go on a CSI-eque mission to find out who the killer is. Residing in Harri’s estate are the Dell Farm Crew, a sorry bunch of ragamuffins who go by the street names ok X-Fire (thats cross fire to you), Killa and some other irrelevants. Harri’s older sister, Lydia appears to have fallen in with them by proxy through Killa’s repulsive girlfriend, Myquita.

As the novel progresses, Helman makes it glaringly obvious who the killers are and I think for this reason, I found Harri’s naiveté extremely irritating!!! Harri’s brazen and innocent investigations continue to irk the “Dell Farm Crew” boys; he spies on them through binoculars, collects their fingerprints amongst other Inspector Gadget BS. The coup de grace comes on the last day of term, the day after Harri has had his sports day victory and shared a kiss with his girlfriend, Poppy. He is so elated that he begins to run home, on cloud nine, only for someone he recognises to bump into him and “chook” him. He lies in his own blood whilst speaking to his pigeon friend until his life escapes him. I forgot to mention The Pigeon. Yes, The Pigeon!!! Harri decides to make friends with a pigeon and leaves it titbits of food on his balcony, much to the annoyance of his mother. The novel is littered with excerpts from The Pigeon’s point of view (littered being the operative word).

Rewa’s take on things: When I first saw the title of the novel, I thought Helman had named it so because his characters would speak “pidgin English” as is the norm in many west African countries. There were only two Ghanaian slangs words, “hutious” and “Asweh” (you get to ABHOR this Asweh word by the end of the novel due to the sheer amount of repetition that Helman uses). Most of the time, we were given street slang like, “dope-fine” and “bo-styles”. I was bewildered.

There has been a lot of hype around this novel. What struck me about it is that Stephen is neither Ghanaian nor council-estate habitant, he is so far removed from either that I’m surprised he made these his focal point. Harri’s joie de vivre was very refreshing especially given that I’d just read about Zuba  (The Shadow Of A Smile) and Griffin (The Invisible Man). A lot of critics and readers revere this novel and I think that it is because they’re reluctant to criticize writings on a topic so sensitive as gang violence amongst demoralized youth  in an inner-city council estate. However, I believe that Stephen is a flawed writer but underscoring his fallibility is a cheap shot and an unsophisticated way of standing out from the crowd that seem to love this novel so much.

Harri’s impending “chooking” had been sign-posted throughout the entire novel – you just knew (well I knew) that it was going to happen. He was really tempting fate with the quintessential estate hooligans. What was interesting was viewing domestic abuse (his aunt Sonia and her Neanderthal of a boyfriend), bullying, sexual exploitation (Miquita – I retched some vomit into my mouth when she started kissing Harri and making him interact with her nether regions) and peripheral racism. It was interesting for two reasons. First one being that from a child’s point of view, one can easily get lost in how daily on-goings can affect their already impressionable outlook on life. However, Imy interest wasn’t piqued enough to explore these routes further. Second reason being that I don’t think I have ever come across such a naïve 11-year-old!!! I mean, come on, case of faux-naif if I ever did see one!!!!

Regarding The Pigeon’s POV; I neither enjoyed this nor thought it bore any relevance to the issue at hand. I don’t know what Helman was trying to achieve here but whatever it was, it was completely lost on yours truly! This pigeon was presented almost as an angel if you will. A pigeon. A friggin pigeon!!! It comes out with pretentious, prophetic statements such as, “they’re just meat looslely wrapped around a blazing star. We don’t mourn the wrapping once it’s discarded, we celebrate the freeing of the star”. It was neither poetic nor ink-worthy and detracted from the severity of the issues Helman was trying to draw attention to, especially coming from a filthy pigeon!

The only part of this novel that evoked any sort of emotion in me at all was when his mother said to his aunt Sonia that she’d brought her children over to UK so that they were given the opportunity to  reach places higher than she ever could. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this novel to anyone – it was a laudable effort on Helman’s part to try to shed light on a subject so sensitive and to try to get the reader to see that sometimes, these hoodlums are scared little boys hiding beneath their hoodies. I certainly remain unconvinced. And I still hate pigeons. And yes, they are still rats with wings.

 

 

 

The Shadow Of A Smile

The story: Meet Zuba, a young Biochemistry graduate with dreams of undertaking a PhD (told you Nigerians need 10 characters minimum after their surname). He has a huge “kee-loid” scar on his forhead due to an unfortunate accident eons ago which claimed the lives of his mother and younger brother. He is totally obsessed with this keloid of his, it  acts a conduit through which Zuba expresses his varying levels of stress through various means such as rubbing, stroking, fingering, you-get-the-picture. He also has a penchant for novels featuring other such scarred characters.

His father, Professor Maduekwe sets up a secondary school and welcomes into his employment, the devil and his advocate aka Mrs Egbetuyi and her husband. Professor Maduekwe falls ill and it is left to Zuba to take the reins and make sure daddy’s efforts aren’t in vain. A seemingly trivial series of events cause Zuba to order the dismissal of the fiendish Egbetuyis. They’re having none of it and demand a gargantuan payout if he wants them to leave the premises in peace. The principled Zuba refuses and Mr Ebgetuti swears to see to it that Zuba pays for this transgression. After this, things appear to spiral out of control. Zuba is arrested on trumped  up charges of armed robbery and manhandling of the Egbetuyis and goes from the police cell to a prison. The situation is dire. The conditions that the prisoners are forced to live in are beyond belief. Actually, they aren’t, this is Nigeria after all… Honestly though, I was horrified. Zuba is exonerated in the end and the Egbetuyis get their just deserts.

Rewa’s take on things: This review will be short because I found this novel moderately enjoyable. That I found it enjoyable at all was due to my partiality to African literature. It isn’t that there is something drastically wrong with Ozumba’s writing style, nothing particularly askew with the story etc. I think that for me, I found the protagonist incredibly lacklustre and spineless. Perhaps it would have been more interesting if the story had been focussed on Zuba’s less-privileged cohort, Ike. Oh well.

I believe the novel offered some insight into the judicial system in Nigeria, the despicable state of our prisons and the consequences of bribery and nepotism.

Towards the end, the story became increasingly farcical and I found the ending a bit of an anti-climax. Even though there was a build-up to Zuba’s eventual release, when it did come, I felt sort of deflated. It just seemed too sudden and easy. By the end of the novel, I had just about had it with Zuba’s keloid-stroking and thoughts-about-nothing-but-keloid. The descriptions and characters felt elementary and shallow; Kachi has a remarkable inability to explore more diverse similes and modes of communication. He relies on repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. Get the picture? Like, enough already *does American cheerleader voice*.

I believe at the heart of Ozumba’s novel was the take-home message of unfailing hope and triumph amidst unrelenting adversity. However, this bride did not make it past my threshold. If anything, having read about Zuba’s horrific experiences as a result of his insistence on holding on tight to the reigns of his high horse, I would be more inclined to let go of the proverbial reins and dabble in a bit of the system’s venality.

Actually, the only thing Ozumba achieved with this novel, was wasting half an hour of my lover’s life  with which he spent traipsing around the streets of London in search of this novel for me (kindle let me down you see). Half an hour that could have been better spent showering me with hugs and kisses *does Kanye shrug*.

While I must admit that this particular review of mine has been slap-dash, this was because I was so uninspired by the shallow characters and dull cadence of story-telling which both substantiate the low rating I have given this book.

Say You’re One Of Them

The story: Akpan’s debut will be a bit difficult to describe as it is a collection of five novellas but I’ll do my best.

Ex-Mas Feast. Its that time of year when Santa finally puts Rudolph, Prancer and crew to good use. Needless to say he bypasses 8-year-old Jigana and his siblings in the most abject of slums in Kenya. So destitute is his family’s condition that his 12-year-old sister, Maisha, who is a v-jay-jay utilise, is considered to have the luck of the draw. After all, she gets to ride in her clients’ Jaguars and other such fancy cars. There is also the baby which the siblings use as a pass-the-parcel prop for begging. Their living conditions are horrendous to say the least. Their most prized possession is a bottle of glue which the children take in turns to sniff in order to stave off their hunger pangs. Maisha decides to leave the hovel in search of a better life and the story ends with her family pleading with her not to leave as she drags her meagre belongings into a taxi.

Fattening For Gabon. This was the most harrowing story of all in my opinion (but we’ll get to that later J). 11 year old Kotchikpa and his 5-year-old sister, Elewa are under the care of their uncle, Fofo Kpee. Their parents have AIDs and are no longer able to care for them. One day their uncle returns home with a shiny new motorbike – the children’ s joy is unbounded! Their uncle  tells them it was a gift from their parents back in the village, both of whom are recovering well. Pinocchio ain’t got nothing on Fofo Kpee. He also tells the children that they have godparents who will be alleviating their poverty-stricken lives and relocating them from Benin to Gabon in a matter of weeks.  True to form, these godparents come to pay them a visit, bringing good tidings and lots of food! From the beginning, you get a strong sense of foreboding which also begins to fester Kotchikpa as the novel progresses. Their uncle forces them to recite lines about their new family, feeds them more food in those pending weeks than they’ve probably ever received in their lifetime and conditions them to get used to sleeping in an airtight room (to prepare them for the passage on the ship). During this transition. Fofo Kpee begins to have a change of heart and realises he can no longer do this. The way Akpan describes his descent into depravity is brilliant! He then tries to run away with the children on the motorbike but he gets caught and beaten to death, literally. The children’s new captors keep them locked in the room whilst waiting for departure date to arrive. Kotchikpa hears a grave being buried for their uncle and realises he’s dead and the next day, manages to get the keys of the padlocked window from his uncle’s jacket. That fateful night, he unlocks the window, awakens his irritating little sister (admit it, she was!) and tries to push her out of the window to her freedom. A blast of air hits her face and she screams, alarming their sentinel outside who rushes in. Kotchikpa is able to make it out of the window in time, leaving us with the poignant final words, “I knew I could not outrun my sister’s screams”.

My Parent’s Bedroom. Based in Rwanda during the times of the civil war between the Hutus and the Tutsis, I imagined this story to be told from the point of view of one of the unfortunate children from the film, “Shooting Dogs”. A young girl of mixed Hutu and Tusti lineage watches her Dad use a machete to crack open her mother’s head because she is a Tutsi – never seen a more severe case of peer pressure in my life! Before the gruesome death, her mother tells her that if anyone asks of her tribal origins, “say you’re one of them”.

Luxurious Hearses. Dear old Naij is where this story is based. On one of the infamous “luxury” buses that cart the local people from state to state acts as a microcosm for Nigeria’s tribal turmoil. A young fundamentalist muslim named Jubril is trying to escape from the north (where his heritage caused his so-called friends to questions his dedication to Islam). He gets on one of these luxury buses where he pretends to be a Christian. This would be an easy feat except that homeboy has a strong Hausa accent and is missing his right hand as a result of a Sharia punishment. Also on the bus, you have a deranged ex-soldier, a pious Igbo chief, a Mother Theresa aspirant, some razz university girls to mention a few. In a nutshell, Jubril accidentally slips his right arm out of his pocket to the enlightenment of his fellow passengers who eject him from the bus and promptly send him on his way to his maker.

What Language Is That. a young Ethiopian, Christian girl is forbidden from speaking to her Muslim best friend. No, seriously.

Rewa’s take on things: People hail Ex-Mas Feast as the best story in the collection but my personal favourite, well not favourite because the content was gruesome, was Fattening For Gabon. I think the reason for this was that in all the stories, we know that the young people are destined for doom, they know it too but only in Fattening For Gabon were these young children given a false sense of hope, only for it to have it dashed. The way in which Akpan describes Kotchikpa’s joy and tears during his first ride on that damned motorbike, his joy at eating the bullet-ridden meat provided by his purported godparents, his eventual realisation of his planned demise is just stellar.

With Luxurious Hearses, I was keen to find out how Akpan would make Jubril’s fate pan out. From the onset, it was obvious to me at least that he’d never make it across, too many odds stacked against him to maintain his disguise. Say You’re One Of Them was just horrendous. I found myself constantly wishing the young girl would escape rape and death but just knowing she would encounter both on the war-torn streets of Rwanda. Best Friend was totally pointless.

In summary, don’t read this book if you live in an airy-fairy world where such things are un-heard of. Read this if you want an eye-opener into the plights of young lives faced with ethnic cleansing, civil, political and religious wars over which they have absolutely no control. Weirdly enough, I find that I’m unable to review this collection of stories as I have been the other novels. I think its because they’re just too true, if that makes sense. I cannot say they are good or bad because these are the children who are involved in the conflicts we read or hear about on the news every day but just dismiss because we don’t know who they are, we don’t know their names, their hopes, fears, dreams. But Akpan brings this to light in a way that is bitterly brilliant.  Heartbreaking, I believe, is an apt review of Say You’re One Of Them.

 Time to move on to something far more light-hearted!

I Do Not Come To You By Chance

The story: Kingsley, the opara, first-born son, struggles to provide for his beloved family. Their circumstances took a turn for the worse when his ailing father’s income began to dwindle and health failures saw him in hospital (conditions here may beggar belief but are reflective of the conditions that some endure in Nigeria). Their family’s fundamental beliefs have always been education, education, education (Nigerian’s love nothing more than a minimum of 9 letters after one’s name, you might as well go and play in traffic if you have a B.Sc. or drink a vat of rentokill if you have a B.A.). So dear Kingsley, owner of a brilliant Chemical Engineer mind (has to be medicine, law or engineering – nothing else will do!) but with no connections in the corrupt Nigerian job market is at a loss.

Inability to pay for their father’s medical bills leads Kingsley  into his notorious uncle, Boniface aka Cash Daddy’s snare. Cash Daddy is a CHARACTER. A silver-tongued rogue cum mastermind, a tyrant who barks out orders whilst taking a crap, possessor of astounding wisdom, incredible charm and unabashed naked exhibitionism. As Kingsley puts it, “He could probably even talk a spider into weaving silk socks for him.”

As Kingsley falls grudgingly under his Cash Daddy’s juju (upgrading his wardrobe in the process), he discovers his own innate flair for the art of deceit and his moral compass begins to rust. He plunges deeper into the intricate world of the Nigerian e-mail scam. The detailed exposition of the unbelievable methods used to string along Western suckers is fascinating and HILARIOUS. Honestly, who would take seriously, an email from “Wazobia” or “Osondi Owendi”? Pure class.

As the scams increase in incredulity and audacity, the novel begins to accomplish something more than simply poking fun at the lust and rapacity that make a small but lucrative fraction of Westerners susceptible to such scams.

 The characters don’t see their actions as immoral or wrong, such entrepreneurial endeavours are justified, afterall the same Westerners pillaged their land in innumerable ways. Also, these embezzled currencies are put to good use; what with funding orphanages, building schools and ensuring v-jay-jay utlisers are give their money’s worth.

Kingsley’s mother’s pious nagging and the unfortunate poisoning of Cash Daddy by his competitors sees Kingley changing his perspective and career choice. Taking the late Cash Daddy’s advice, he sets up his own telecommunications enterprise and Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your aunt.

Rewa’s take on things: This is easily one of my most memorable reads of the year. Where do I begin – it was hilarious, uncomplicated, enjoyable, well-written, full of Naija colloquialisms and the list goes on and on. And on. Its a like reading a Nollywood film if you can imagine such, while some things appear utterly unbelievable, this is Nigeria my friend and such occurences are commonplace!!!!

Maybe I’m biased but the local champion in me could so easily visualise the akara-seller, hear the sounds of the argumentative molue conductors and feel the conditioned air at Chocolat Royal.

The characters were incredible – quintessential Nigerians. Boniface aka Cash Daddy (imagine a Rick Ross lookalike but probably fatter and uglier) was the icing on the cake. He was the epitome of a avaricious, entrepreneurial, benevolent Nigerian.

Kingsley (What a fantastic choice of name – it doesn’t get more Igbo than that!) held his own as the morally upright nephew with the terrible dress sense. That is, a dress sense that doesn’t involve “yellow crocodile skin shoes with purple, red, blue stripes across the front”. The monikers that Nwaubani doles out to her characters are just pure class; Cash Daddy, Protocol Officer, World Bank and Pound Sterling – the-only currency-with-a-surname (Oh Yeah!!!). The source of Cash Daddy’s mass wealth, the fraudulent emails which so many of us dismiss by hitting the delete button are also wonderfully detailed in the novel. They are full of everyday naija spiel; the flattery, the charm, the deceit and even the subliminal insults.  

It was unfortunate that Cash Daddy met his demise in the end. Whilst he was a blatantly corrupt manners with no sense of etiquette whatsoever, he always ensured that his people were always well taken care of. He would have probably made a better governor than majority of the goons currently in power.

To be honest, I wasn’t reading this novel to highlight points for discussion around the corruption of a blessed-but-don’t-know-it Nation, the plight the developing world suffered in the hands of the West or any of that deep and intelligent stuff. I read this for the sheer entertainment and reminiscence of Nigeria that I wasn’t able to derive from the likes of Secret Lives Of Baba Segi’s Wives.

Nwaubani did an excellent job with her first novel and I thoroughly look forward to her next offering. You go girl *flexes neck and clicks finger in diva style*!

The Tiger’s Wife

The story: based in the Balkans, The Tiger’s Wife is told from the perspective of a young Serbian doctor, Natalia, a character I felt the novel could have done without.

It begins with her receiving news of the death of her grandfather, the news of his death, while earth-shattering, doesn’t come as much of a surprise to Natalia as she’d known for a while that he had cancer. It is rather the circumstances of his death that the novel follows. It courses through the history of the fictional village of Galina, where her grandfather lived as a young boy. We follow the narrative through to the advance of the escapee tiger to his village. He happens to know what a tiger is because of the pictures he’d seen in The Jungle Book – a novel that remains about his person for the rest of his life.

When sojourning from tales of the grandfather, Obreht tells us the background stories of the bear-man (his name alludes me, it isn’t important anyway), the butcher aka pseudo-musician aka wife batterer aka arschloch, the deaf-mute Muslim wife of arschloch, the alchemist and a few other unimportant characters.

You learn more of the grandfather’s life and how much he influenced Natalia with their ritual visits to the zoo amongst other things. With all the flashbacks, you also get a glimpse of Natalia’s current day activites; stuck on a farmland where a bunch of superstitious migrants are trying to uncover the body of a long-dead cousin whom they believe has placed a curse on them and other such niceties. Natalia’s life isn’t as interesting as her grandfathers. It really isn’t.

I’m a bit bored of relating the story back to you so I’ll go straight onto my opinion on the book…

Rewa’s take on things: I was really looking forward to reading this but I found my brain taking regular vacay’s. Normally I absolutely love novels that are entrenched in different cultures/eras (Janice Lee’s The Piano Teacher for example) that are beyond my living sphere but this did nothing for me. I wasn’t any more curious about sampling rakija than I was about eating cheese (one of the most disgusting accompaniments on earth – yuk!).

Natalia stirred no sentiments in me whatsoever – I found her bland and uninspiring. The child inside me was disappointed to find that she didn’t meet Gavo at the crossroads, I was hoping that she’s meet her demise then *evil laughter* or at least prove the deathless man’s existence. Gavo was the most fascinating character by far. I’d much rather have read about the grandfather’s life and encounters with Gavo through his own narative and not through Natalia’s. I also liked the deaf, mute Tiger’s Wife. She seemed to possess an inner strength that her sadomasochistic husband could never break. Why the alchemist poisoned her, I’ll never know and he deserved more than a quick hanging at the gallows. What a douche.

The story switching irritated me. I was so keen to move onto her grandfather’s dalliances with Gavo that I was frustrated to have to be held up by narratives on the Bear, the wife batterer, the Alchemist and other such irreleavants!

What I found especially poignant about the novel was the behaviour of the animals at the zoo during the war. Foxes eating their cubs, tigers eating their own body parts, ducks cracking open their own eggs to prevent the ducklings from entering this ugly world. It was very sad. But as my boyfriend says, I have a penchant for anything furry with four legs and big eyes J.

 I also liked the following of the tiger’s journey from the destroyed zoo to the comfort of the Tiger’s Wife, I felt that Obreht was trying to link this to the state of her country during the war but I can’t quite make the connection.

 Oh and by the way, the title, Tiger’s Wife, is allocated to the deaf-mute girl, the superstitious villagers thought she was indulging in bestiality because she and the tiger shared a bond.

On the whole, I got to learn a bit more about the Balkan wars and folklore (on which Gavo and a few other characters are based) but beyond that, I’d rather have spent the evening sampling cheese!

 

Tar Baby

The story: A few weeks before Christmas, on the Isle des Chevaliers in the Caribbean, you have a white, green-thumbed millionaire, Valerian Street, who plays classical music to his plants and loves Bally shoes and is patron to his servants’ niece. He is married to a former beauty queen, Margaret Street, with ‘blue-if-its-a-boy’ eyes, who is twenty years his junior and believes mangoes have in excess of 400 calories (you see where this character is going). She has a brooding obsession with their son, Michael, returning home for Christmas (he never does). You have their servants, Sydney, a bunioned butler with a penchant for recommending huaraches as footwear of choice. His wife, Ondine, is mistress of the kitchen and is characterised by her thick, grey hair which she braids into ‘horns’. They have a niece whom they have supported with every penny they have, “yalla” (yellow) Jadine, a fashion model with sponge-coloured skin and ‘mink’ eyes.

They all live happily in Valerian’s mansion with Margaret and Valerian’s constant bickering and Ondine’s glorious cooking until one day, after a particular bad spat between master and wife, faeces hits those proverbial blades. Margaret storms off to her boudoir and later on at night, awakens the entire house with her banshee screams. Turns out there was a stinking, destitute, black man hidden in her walk-in closet. Enter Son, an illiterate scallywag from the south, on the run for murdering his wife whom he caught in bed with a 13 year old boy. How insulting!

Rather than call the police, Valerian invites homeboy to dinner, for his (Valerian’s) own amusement and much to the annoying and disbelief of everyone else. He is treated like a royal guest, guest room, soufflé, silk pyjamas et al.

Things really start heating up when Son enters Jadine’s room unannounced, they end up having an argument after he accuses her of being a felatio-connoisseur to have gotten so far in the modelling industry, what with black skin and all. He ends up ‘smelling’ her. Literally. This gets Jadine really, really shaken up and livid. She doesn’t report this incident to Valerian (he probably wouldn’t have given two hoots anyway) because she feels ashamed of the whole episode. Son gets a makeover that Gok-Wan would be proud of and starts interacting with three of the other helpers on Valerian’s estate, Yardman, Therese and “Mary”. These don’t like the house servants whom they feel are snobbish and aloof. That aside, Son later tries to apologise and they go for a picnic where he places a sensuous finger on her foot, o la laaaaaaaa. Nothing happens there, gutter-minded folks. They return to the mansion.

Fast forward to Christmas day, the Valerian’s son about as present as Casper. Everyone’s nerves are highly strung. A full-blown quarrel ensues between just about everyone on the table and Ondine exposes Margaret for the batty cow that she is. Ondine tells Valerian about how Margaret used to physically abuse Michael when he was a child by ‘sticking pins in him’ and other such troubling things. Sick b*tch. Everyone is angry with everyone. Jadine, who is upset, the poor dear (*rolls eyes*) leads Son to her room to act as a comfort blanket, all the while insisting that she isn’t interested in hanky panky. Whatever. They do the do.

A few days (or was it hours) she and Son elope to New York and begin a life together. They have the sort of fiery relationship (where they physically abuse one another and dangle themselves out of windows) that deluded couples believe is love. One day, he takes things too far and Jadine is gone. Without so much as a post-it on the fridge or any such means of a ‘f*ck you, I’m gone’.

Jadine returns to the Island one more time where she finds Valerian in ailing health and her relatives with their knickers in a twist because she won’t stay put and care for them. She’s leaves and goes to Paris. Son, like a typical pained lover, returns to the Island in search of his love with ‘skin the colour of a natural sponge and mink eyes’. The end. See what I mean about Toni Morrison?

Rewa’s take on things: Toni Morrison is one of the main reasons I started this site. Her novels always leave me second guessing, wondering, wishing, wanting to shake answers out of her. And that’s what makes her such a brilliant writer. She does aggravate me to no end though!

I will commend her on the character interactions in this novel. What didn’t Morrison offer? Black on black, white on white, bourgeois on proletariat, educated on illiterate, the mixes were endless. It was interesting to see the interactions between Sydney, Ondine, Washerman (Gideon) and Sydney, all black and uneducated but rather than be unified by race, they are divided by class and this resentment brims beneath.

I wasn’t too sure of what I made of Tar Baby. The characters just seemed too disparate. Ex-beauty queen? Black model? I wasn’t too sold. Other things I couldn’t quite understand. Why did Jadine allow her uncle and aunt to serve her at the high table with the Valerians whilst they supped in their own destitute home? Was it because she was educated and her relatives not? Or bi-racial thus the colour of her skin renders her superior to her darker skinned relatives? Why did she volunteer the invective, “n****r”, when Margaret was describing Son but got slighted when Margaret then proceeded to call him a baboon? She embodied what people call a ‘racial traitor’.

As usual, there were no real resolutions and some of the characters are especially exaggerated but that’s one of Morrison’s idiosyncrasies I believe. There were lines of soul-searching dialogue that I felt were completely pointless. Forgive me Toni, I was down with a cold and my synapses probably couldn’t appreciate your mastery. Undoubtedly, she is skilled at inviting her readers to get to know her characters through their speech, she has the ability to take you on a journey through her characters minds and surroundings if you will.

What I also liked about the novel was the capriciousness of the house in which they all resided, nothing was permanent; china left unboxed, sheets left un-spread. Blink and someone is gone. This is also seen though Jadine’s capriciousness. It gave a sense of, ‘you are welcome here but not for too long’. And this is the feeling I got after reading the final words of the novel. I was welcomed into the love shared between Jadine and Son, into Ondine’s Kitchen, into Valerian’s greenhouse and into Sydney’s Ballys but this hospitality was soon overstayed and I was ejected as soon as I shut the pages of Tar Baby (or rather, pressed the forward button on my Kindle).

 

Anthills Of The Savannah

The story: I won’t dwell too much on trying to explain the story to you my fellow readers for two reasons. One, I hope that you have already read this wonderful book and two, it is far too difficult to summarise a story as thought-provoking and multi-faceted as this one in a few paragraphs. It is far too all-encompassing. In a nutshell, it follows four main characters, His Excellency, Sam, who rules the fictional country of Kangan (an allegory for Nigeria I believe). Chris Oriko, the Commisioner of Information, Beatrice Okoh, Secretary of Finance and Chris’s girlfriend and Ikem Osodi, editor of the National Gazette newspaper. Elewa, another noteworthy character is Ikem’s pidgin English-speaking, fiery girlfriend. Chris, Ikem and Sam were former classmates.

Sam has Ikem “fatally wounded”, these words specifically used to misdirect the masses, when Ikem is arrested in his home for supposedly engaging in a coup. Prior to this, Chris and Ikem seemed to be on the path to reviving their strained friendship though a communal fear and dislike for Sam. After learning of Ikem’s “fatal wound”, Chris goes into hiding and the faeces hits the fan.

Some of the mastery of Anthills Of The Savannah so powerful is the way in which Achebe oscillates between first person narratives of Ikem (a few hard-hitting poems thrown in here and there), Chris and Beatrice and switches to third person for the denouement. In this way, we are aware of the maelstrom into which the characters have been thrown but we still aren’t ready for the volcanic eruption that is the state of affairs in Kangan.

 Rewa’s take on things: In keeping with Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease, Achebe runs the aftermath of colonialism and ever prevailing political corruption. Of the three novel, Anthills Of The Savannah, although very powerful and masterfully written, has been my least favourite. I don’t know why. Achebe’s prose is as intelligent, succinct and commendable as ever but I found it so difficult to engage with the story or the characters. This could have something to do with the fact that I was down with a cold and trying to liberate my nasal passages and concentrate at the same time!

Chris I found to be sanctimonious, Ikem who seemed to suffer from chronic weltschmerz, His Excellency a general weakling who sought to make scape-goats out of those that he deemed a threat to his illusionary authority. As for Beatrice, I couldn’t identify with her as a woman, Desdemona complex and all. Elewa was probably my favourite, I loved reading her pidgin English. I found her brave, amenable and unpretentious.

From the beginning, Achebe sets the tone for what the novel will be about. He reflects on the state of affairs in Kangan through Chris’s words, “…looking back on the last two years it should be possible to point to a decisive event and say: it was at such and such a point that everything went wrong and the rules were suspended. But I have not found such a moment or such a cause…”. The rest of the novel sets about on a journey which shows the reader that there is no one cause for the plight of Kangan but rather, as the old axiom goes, one things leads to another. We see that a confluence of interwoven and seemingly inconsequential events trigger off a ticking time bomb. Ikem uses the magazine as  a vehicle through which his own voice and opinion can be heard but he is ousted, set up and silenced. Chris’s demise soon follows suit whilst he is on the run, although his own death was avoidable.

What is interesting about the progression of the novel is that as the men fall, the women emerge and commandeer the ruins the men have left behind. Elewa gives birth to the late Ikem’s baby girl. Elewa’s elderly uncle is  late to the naming ceremony and so against the grain of deeply entrenched customary traditions, the women name the child and a typically male name at that. I read two things into this. Firstly, that the elders were late and unable to perform their duty suggested to me that Achebe was alluding to the fact that in order for change to become manifest, fresh blood, untainted by fossil ideologies and corruption. The second thing was the position of women in society, this was touched upon in the novel in a dialogue between Ikem and Beatrice.

Achebe wants you to see that Nigerians, Africans in general, accepted the subjugation from the colonialists all too readily, that they did not put up a fight. And now, they still allow this to continue, under dictators and such parodists. They are complicit in their own shame. Anthills Of The Savannah tells you that African society needs to be integrated, with women as important as men, and equality amongst all classes.  

Irrespective of my feelings towards the characters, I am in awe of Achebe. I found myself highlighting so many paragraphs in my kindle to return to just so I could re-capture the sheer brilliance of his writing. I would read some passages and think to myself, how does one sit and write such? He is one gifted man and anyone who studies English literature needs to read every single one of this man’s novels. Unlike the much hailed Salman Rushdie, Achebe makes no pretences (some people will probably want to lynch me for berating Rushdie but hey, my opinion). His writing is simple, adroit and so elegant. That Booker Prize was well deserved indeed.