August 2020 Reading Round-Up

Recent Canadian fiction has been the focus of my reading life this month, as part of my Shadow Giller jury project. Out of the 30 books I read in August, 18 were for the Shadow Giller. As usual in my monthly round-up, I will share brief reviews of the best. These include audiobooks, translated fiction, science writing, an award-winning children's novel, a graphic novel and lots of Canadian fiction. Five out of the thirteen books that are highlights this month are also eligible for the Giller, so you will find links to my longer reviews when you get to those in the list below.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Audiobook (17.5 hr) read by Angus King

A gay boy with a tender love for his alcoholic mother comes of age amid poverty and high unemployment in 1980s Glasgow. Heartbreaking and gorgeous: the two main characters are unforgettable. If your library has Hoopla, it‘s a treat to hear the Scottish voices in the audiobook read by Angus King.

    New Year‘s in Scotland was a legendary two-day party. New Year‘s in Agnes‘s    Glasgow was endless. When they first came to Pit Head the boy had seen a house party that lasted for days. Agnes had still been drunk by the 6th.

    No day ever started well with six dozen raw chickens. And today, of all days, it was stealing the sweetness out of his daydreams.

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel

An amazing, eye-opening novella about a lesbian teen, Okomo, an orphan who lives with her grandparents in a traditional Fang settlement in Equatorial Guinea. Despite the odds being against her—same sex love is reviled by the villagers, and her family expects Okomo to bring them dowry wealth by attracting a husband—this story has a happy ending. 

    “Your uncle was never a normal child. Ever since he was little, he liked women‘s things: cooking, cleaning, smiling, and talking too much. Your mother‘s home was like a church altar it was so clean!”

    “What is a woman without a man? Dina is on the brink of old age—she is 18 years old and has no husband! And her family still has not benefited from her body.”

    The men left for the House of the Word to wait for the food, and the women went into one of the two kitchens depending on their place in the hierarchy of polygamous families. First wives went into my grandmother‘s kitchen, while second, third, fourth (and so on) wives went over to the kitchen of Osá‘s second wife. The two groups hated each other intensely.

The Beauty of the Death Cap by Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze
Translated from French by Tina Kover

I was in exactly the right mood for dark, twisted humour in the voice of a fussy, delusional mushroom fanatic in the Auvergne region of France. Nikonor is tight lipped around people, but in his journal he eventually reveals all. The tale is delightfully outrageous and macabre.

    I was three and a half years old. Already highly advanced for my age, I understood even the finer points of mushroom-hunting perfectly, thanks to an illustrated book (Le Petit Mycologue, 1923 edition) presented to me by my father for my second birthday.

    I must absolutely be in full possession of my faculties—that is one of the reasons why I eat so many Portuguese sardines (sardines are excellent for mental acuteness, you know).

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
Audiobook (5 hr) read by the author

Bisexual science journalist Lulu Miller was searching for the secret to resilience when fish taxonomist and eugenics proponent David Starr Jordan caught her attention. His desire to turn chaos into order seemed to help him handle a series of setbacks and tragedies. Part biography, part memoir, part history, part murder mystery, this book is wholly fascinating. And there's an explanation for the title that really surprised me. A Publishers Weekly review calls it "frustratingly disjointed," but I enjoyed the audiobook so much that I listened to it twice in a row.

    The longer we examine our world the stranger it proves to be. Perhaps there will be a mother, waiting inside a person deemed unfit. Perhaps there will be medicine inside a weed. Salvation inside the kind of person you had discounted.

    Miller on the leading role the US played in eugenics ideology: “This was not a fringe movement. It crossed party lines. The first five presidents of the 20th century hailed its promise. Eugenics courses were taught at prestigious universities all across the country. […] In 1916 an American guy named Madison Grant published a eugenics book that a German guy named Hitler would later call his bible.”

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
Audiobook (7 hr) read by Cathleen McCarron

I bailed on two audiobooks in a row before settling on this luminous collection of essays. Archeological sites in Alaska and the Orkneys, a long ago trip to Tibet, family, health, the natural world: Kathleen Jamie writes about all of these things with a poetic precision I adore. Words like smur and blaeberries are performed in the audiobook with a proper Scottish accent by Cathleen McCarron.

    The landscape was astonishing. There was nothing I wanted to do more than sit quietly and look at it, come to terms with its vastness.

Upgrade Soul by Ezra Claytan Daniels
Graphic Novel

For their 45th wedding anniversary, a childless Black and Latina couple decide to undergo a biogenetic procedure that will restore their youth. In this outstanding science fiction novel told in comics format, selfish desires are counterbalanced by love and strong moral ethics. Don‘t make my mistake and put off reading this because the cover is creepy. The interior art is finely detailed and washed in somber hues.

“My dad made Slane blue because he knew he would never get away with writing a Black hero.”

Stand on the Sky by Erin Bow

Girl-power adventure set among the nomadic Kazakhs of Mongolia. I like the nuances of chosen family in this, and, of course, the indomitable 13-year-old girl named Aisulu who trains an eagle. The primary audience is children ages 9-13, but this Governor General Literary Award-winner would also be an engaging family read-aloud.

    In a land where girls are supposed to have hearts made of milk, Aisulu had a heart made of sky.

    And here is something that is hard but true: a place can be perfect, and still not be enough.

Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys

A poetic novel based on a true story of friendship between a boy and a murderer in mid-twentieth century Saskatchewan. Link to full review.

Indians on Vacation by Thomas King

A funny novel about living with depression and despair. Link to full review.

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good

How do residential school survivors cope with the trauma they've experienced? In this heartbreaking, hopeful novel, Michelle Good brings five characters to life to answer that question. Link to full review.

Watching You Without Me by Lynn Coady

Suspenseful domestic drama. Link to full review.

Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough

Pieces of short fiction about Canadian identity as part of the African diaspora -- short stories, autobiographical fiction, science fiction, spy thriller, memoir, metafiction, history, historical fiction: whatever form this hybrid collection uses, by the end it has transformed into a novel. It's safe to call it outstanding. Link to full review.

Home Sickness by Chih-Ying Lay
Translated from Mandarin by Darryl Sterk

Ten insightful, melancholic stories set in contemporary Taiwan. Link to full review.

Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut

South African writer Damon Galgut takes readers on a journey into E.M. Forster's interior life in the novel Arctic Summer. It covers the dozen or so years that Forster spent writing (and mentally stuck, not writing) A Passage to India.

During that time, Forster travelled extensively, but movement did not dispel his inner inertia. Repressing his desire for the love and companionship of other men forced him to control all emotions equally. Returning home, Forster felt at odds with his own life, as one does after spending extended time away. There is a sense of waiting, slowly building towards readiness to move forward; it requires patience on the part of the reader.

It's not for someone looking for a propulsive plot. The pace is stately -- I want to say 'glacial' because of the title, but that would sound pejorative. I admire Galgut's eloquent, introspective style. Arctic Summer makes a close examination of the complicated contradictions that form a unique individual.

"Was he a conscientious objector? The description didn't fit comfortably. The principle of abstaining didn't ennoble him, any more than bloodshed would. Both sides had their idealism, which he heard everywhere he went, till he felt that he might choke. What was most distressing was the ability to understand both viewpoints while being able to follow neither."

Homosexuality was discussed in couched terms in the early twentieth century. Forster refers to 'minorites' and 'homogenic love.' He calls Maurice "my Uranian romance:"

"The feeling of release was huge. An enormous pressure had built up behind the words, years and years of silence, which now pushed into the open. Few things are more powerful than confession, and he told it all to the page. The uncertainty, the doubt, the slowly dawning realisation: he could let it spill."

"Of course, he could never publish it."

Maurice is the only one of E.M. Forster's novels that I have read so far. (My blog comments are here.)  

The following passages from Arctic Summer have given me wonderful insights into the mental work that a writer does: 

"Though he couldn't let go of himself enough to worship, he had never lost a sense of an ultimate cause, a Thing at the back of things, which propelled events without actually shaping them. Whatever the ruptures and ructions of human life, he felt, the universe operated according to some vast, unfolding principle, and to abandon oneself to its rhythms wasn't a senseless undertaking.

  It came to him now that his book might express something of this unity through its structure. It was always a useful moment when a story revealed its deeper nature to him -- told him, as it were, why he was writing it -- and he experienced such a realisation now. He had a sense of a gathering shape, of an underlying architecture to his narrative."

"So his characters, he felt, weren't likeable. No, they had been forged in angry gloom, scored and scratched by their maker."

The title, A Passage to India, comes from a line in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, adding another layer of queer context to Forster's writing.

"Everybody had finally given up on expecting anything new, and then he had slipped it out. He had written a great book, apparently, a masterpiece: the best of his career. And the timing, with the questions of Indian independence so much in the air, couldn't have been better."

Damon Galgut has inspired me to read A Passage to India and I feel quite excited about that! I also look forward to hearing Galgut at the Vancouver Writers Fest later this month.

Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Dust is Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's epic contemporary saga set in her home country, Kenya. Ajany Oganda returns to Nairobi from her new life in Brazil after receiving the news that her brother Odidi was murdered. Her father meets her at the airport and they travel north with Odidi's body to Wuoth Ogik, where she grew up. Her childhood home, an elaborate house built of pink coral, is falling apart. The history of that house in the drylands, and of her parents' marriage, and so much that came before these things, all have significance in Ajany's search for answers about Odidi's death.

Owuor won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003 and Dust is her first novel. Her fragmentary, poetic style shifted my brain into a different gear, not quite like anything I'd experienced before. The effect was visceral. All of my senses engaged.

"Remember the moon. It falls to pieces. It becomes whole again. Galgalu had taken to lying under the stars so his nightmares had greater distances to cover before they reached him." Galgalu has worked for the Oganda family since before Ajany was born.

Akai Lokorijorn is Ajany's formidable, mentally disturbed mother. "At unpredictable moments, for nameless reasons, she might erupt with molten-rock fury, belching fire that damaged everything it encountered." Beware the woman who carries an AK-7.

Another of the many characters is Isaiah Bolton, a young British man who wants to learn the fate of his father, a man he never met. The following passage describes Isaiah's arrival in Nairobi:

  "A floral fragrance pierces his senses.

   Uneasy calm. Was the post-election thing over?

   The taxi driver with whom he haggles a day rate is a hearty man called Kalela. Their car is a rehabilitated Suburu.

   On the road.

   Film of shabbiness. The city's tensions in crunched-up shoulders. Honk, honk. Breathing. Movement. A noise jam. A hand-cart jam. A traffic jam. Two men strain at the handlebars of one mkokoteni cart. A woman in a small red T-shirt and white pedal pushers tiptoes across the street in pink high heels. Short-haired gentlemen in gray suits carrying briefcases weave through the traffic. Music boom-booms from a bucking matatu, which a driver steers along a broken island that separates roads, his body leaning outward. "Jinga huyo." Kalela spits at the empty patch where a matatu used to be."

When Ajany's father Nyipir was a child, he was told: "When you get out of this bus, after your feet reach the ground, don't look back. Only a hyena travels the same road twice." But the only way for Ajany and Isaiah to get answers is to stir up dark secrets from the past.

In Dust, desire is coupled with savagery; it's insatiable. Private sorrows entwine with a larger grief for the nation of Kenya.

The narrative rambles back and forth through time: uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s; Tom Mboya's assassination in 1969; ghosts and memories. The threads come together with breathtaking assurance. Violence is countered with humanity and hope.

Ajany "sits with a crowd in her heart." Owuor has left a bit of Kenya in mine.

I'm grateful to Knopf for access to an advance electronic review copy of Dust. The hardcover was published in January 2014.

Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin

I would never have picked up Gaile Parkin's Baking Cakes in Kigali if it wasn't my book group's choice. A funny, heartwarming story about a baker in contemporary Rwanda? I was dubious, and the whimsical book cover design didn't help.

When I read about the lives of people in other parts of the world, I want authenticity. The author grew up in Zambia and has worked in Rwanda, where she counselled girls and women who survived the 1994 genocide. While that is in her favour, the fact that Parkin is white meant she was going to have to convince me in her portrayal of the central character, Angel Tungaraza.

It took me a while to relax my critical attitude. Some slapstick humour at Angel's expense gave me the idea Parkin was making her a buffoon. I did not like that. Eventually, however, I was won over. Angel is a wise woman with a huge heart. I was charmed in spite of my misgivings. I appreciated the feminist emphasis throughout the book, as well as the strong sense of community. I also like the way that difficult topics like AIDs were handled.

I had only read two other novels set in Rwanda: Deogratis (Jean-Philippe Stassen) and Broken Memory (Elisabeth Combres). Both are set closer to the time of the genocide than Baking Cakes in Kigali. I welcomed the hopeful tone of Parkin's novel and the way she shows that healing has happened and is ongoing. I could have done with fewer of Angel's menopausal hot flashes, but I now feel like I have a more rounded overall impression of life in Rwanda.

Readalike: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Alexander McCall Smith).

The Power of One by Bryce Courtney

I recently came across a journal I kept while I was in France for three months in 2004. I had forgotten that I made lots of notes about the books that I read during that time. Here are my thoughts on Bryce Courtney's The Power of One, just as they were recorded back then.

[Warning. Major spoilers ahead. Proceed only if you've already read the book or never intend to.]

The book is divided into three parts and I enjoyed the first part very much. I liked it less and less from then on. Disliked the ending intensely.

Peekay is too perfect. The term Renaissance man is even used several times in the book. Although he is humble - a big point in his favour - I found him self-righteous. He turned down his friend's offer to pay for his schooling at Oxford because he was too proud to accept handouts... yet he would have taken a scholarship.

Minor complaint: the word 'approbation' is used too frequently.

The coincidence of Gideon Mantoma being the son of Peekay's nanny was almost enough to make me throw the book at the wall. And then they became as brothers? Puhleese!

The coincidence of Botha in the mines being the very same Judge of Peekay's childhood was too too much. What did the fight between them signify - other than revenge is sweet. This seems to go against the theme of love and tolerance through the rest of the novel. The fight with Botha coming so soon after the death of Rasputin also irked me. That he died saving Peekay was overly smarmy. It was all laid on too thick at the end.

And what about the Tadpole Angel? The author seemed to go nowhere with that aspect of the story except to say hope and dignity are important.

______________________________________________________________________

My journal entry from May 16, 2004 ends there. I know this book has legions of fans, but I'm not among them. Ten years later, I still remember the strong feelings I had about The Power of One. It seemed so promising at the beginning, and I was invested in the characters, so by the end I was not merely disappointed but felt something closer to betrayal and disgust. Fortunately, this extreme kind of reaction doesn't happen to me often.

Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas by Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks

Primates is a brief and wonderful biography in graphic novel format of three amazing field scientists: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas. They were recruited to study chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans by Dr. Louis Leakey, the famous British naturalist and paleoanthropologist. He believed that "women are fundamentally better in the field than men. They're more patient and give more of themselves."

Jim Ottaviani (author of many other science comics, including Feynman and Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards) wrote the text and Maris Wicks created the bright, appealing illustrations in a clear line style. The realities of roughing it for long periods in remote jungles come through very well. Readers get to know a little of the personality of each woman, as well as their most important accomplishments. It's an inspiring book for readers from Grade 6 to adult.

Nelson Mandela by Kadir Nelson

Kadir Nelson's gorgeous picturebook biography, Nelson Mandela, begins with these lines:

"Rolihlahla played barefooted
on the grassy hills of Qunu.
[...]
The smartest Madiba child of thirteen,
he was the only one chosen for school.
His new teacher would not say his Xhosa name.
She called him Nelson instead."

Free verse is used to outline important moments in Mandela's life within the context of South African politics. Kadir Nelson's paintings glow in warm, rich colours and brown faces and hands dominate the pages. The cover of this book has no text on it at all. Instead, there is a striking portrait of the beloved South African lawyer who fought for justice and to end apartheid, was a political prisoner for over 27 years, won a Nobel peace prize, and was elected president of his country by a landslide.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela: July 18, 1918 - December 6, 2013.

A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

I love this cover.

I listened to the latest Book Riot podcast this morning (episode 26, That's Verbatim, Baby) and heard Rebecca Schinsky talk about a book that made her weep uncontrollably on an airplane (The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien). It reminded me that last month I listened to A House in the Sky, a memoir co-written by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett. If you haven't already heard about her, Lindhout was kidnapped while working as a freelance journalist in Somalia and held captive for 15 months.

I'm not loving the Midwest Tape
audio edition cover. I wouldn't
have picked it up if I hadn't already
heard about the book and knew
I wanted to read it.

On the eve of my departure for the Vancouver Writers Fest, I realized that I had only about 45 minutes left before the end of the audiobook [Simon & Schuster: 13 hours total: read by Lindhout herself]. I considered saving it for the waiting lounge, as it would be about the right length of time, and then I could start a new book once the plane was in the air and the restriction on using electronic devices was lifted. I'm glad that I decided instead to finish it at home before I left, because the most harrowing parts are in that final section. I cried. I was glad that I was not in a public place.

The earlier parts of the book explain why Lindhout was in Somalia in the first place. Her motivations start with her childhood in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, where she escaped her dysfunctional family situation by reading secondhand National Geographic magazines. She moved to Calgary after high school and worked as a waitress until she had enough money to travel for the first time. Lindhout was hooked on travel to exotic locations and repeatedly returned to work in Calgary only long enough to save for another extended trip. I also love to travel, so I was sympathetic, even though I would never choose to go anywhere near a war zone or other dangerous places.

Lindhout maintained her sanity through 460 days of captivity in Somalia. It is a remarkable and memorable story.

Happiness, Like Water by Chinelo Okparanta

In her debut short story collection, Happiness, Like Water, Chinelo Okparanta writes tenderly about all kinds of Nigerian women. They are brave, humble and filled with longing, but true happiness seems beyond their reach.

"'Happiness is like water,' she says. 'We're always trying to grab onto it, but it's always slipping between our fingers.' She looks down at her hands. 'And my fingers are thin,' she says. 'With lots of gaps in between.'"

That excerpt is from 'Grace', one of two stories about lesbian relationships. The other is called 'America'  and it's my favourite in the collection. Okparanta deftly captures complex emotions. Two women fall in love in Nigeria, where "there are penalties for that sort of thing." But if one follows the other to the relative safety of being with each other in America, she risks the pain of leaving her beloved parents and homeland behind. 'America' also has the most political content: the issue of environmental pollution from the petroleum industry in both Nigeria and USA.

Readalikes set in Africa: Daughters Who Walk this Path (Yejide Kilanko); No Sweetness Here (Ama Ata Aidoo); and similar intimate short stories from other parts of the world: The Best Place on Earth (Ayelet Tsabari); Canary (Nancy Jo Cullen); Monstress (Lysley Tenorio); Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri); In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Daniyal Mueenuddin).

I'd Really Like to Eat a Child by Sylviane Donnio and Dorothee de Monfreid

I'd Really Like to Eat a Child is a hilarious children's picture book about a finicky eater. Achilles, a young crocodile, refuses to eat his usual breakfast banana, announcing that he'd rather eat a child instead. French author Sylviane Donnio uses repetition (on the part of Achilles) and histrionics (on the part of his parents) to build humour. Cartoon illustrations by Dorothee de Monfreid quickly develop the characters through body language and facial expressions. There's a wonderful sight gag when we see how very tiny Achilles is in relation to a child that he encounters. Achilles' plans to eat a child are foiled... for the time being.

Some adults have told me they find this immodest proposal content disturbing, but kids love it. A colleague and I are going to perform I'd Really Like to Eat a Child as a puppet show at 3 PM today at EPL Squared. Come down to Churchill Square in Edmonton for a giant book sale, live music, and family activities of all kinds between 10 AM and 5 PM today.

Readalikes: books for a storytime theme "Children Are Delicious" -- Boy Soup (Loris Lesynski); Monsters Eat Whiny Children (Bruce Eric Kaplan); The Qalupalik (Elisha Kilabuk); as well as traditional folktales like Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Ridinghood.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a strong and vibrant novel about identity, belonging and race. Nigerian-born Ifemelu does not think of herself as Black until she moves to the United States for college. There, she cannot escape the all-pervasive racism that accompanies her skin colour. She eventually starts a blog directed at other non-American Blacks, explaining the cultural differences they will encounter in the USA. Ifemelu finds a supportive community and intellectual engagement online.

Blogging is an obvious hook for me, and novels that are written in a mix of formats appeal to me too, so I really liked the excerpts from Ifemelu's blog posts that appear intermittently throughout the book.

Ifemelu is considered a difficult person by some of the other characters, but I love her defiant self-reliance and her forthright manner. When she behaves badly, she is usually quick to make amends... except when it comes to affairs of the heart. One character tells Ifemelu that she is too hard, and that she "has the spirit of husband-repelling." Boyfriends are her biggest challenge.

"Ifemelu once told [her African American boyfriend Blaine] as they watched a news item about a celebrity divorce, that she did not understand the unbending, unambiguous honesties that Americans required in relationships. 'What do you mean?' he asked her, and she heard a looming disagreement in his voice; he, too, believed in unbending, unambiguous honesties. 

'It's different for me and I think it's because I'm from the Third World,' she said. 'To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context.'"

Ifemelu's broken relationship with Obinze, the sweetheart of her youth, propels Adichie's narrative. Americanah is one of those rare books, a romance that affected me so deeply that I wept a little at the end.

It's pure chance that I was already listening to Daughters Who Walk This Path (Yejide Kilanko) when my hold for Americanah came in at the library. Ghana Must Go bags, unreliable electricity and traditional proverbs (Yoruba in one, Igbo in the other) are just a few of the small overlapping details in the two novels. I felt completely immersed in Nigerian culture for a while. Overall, however, Daughters Who Walk this Path is more like Adichie's debut novel Purple Hibiscus than Americanah.

Readalikes: Ghana Must Go (Taiye Selasi) and On Beauty (Zadie Smith). There are also similar themes of identity and belonging in the latter part of We Need New Names (NoViolet Bulawayo).

Daughters Who Walk this Path by Yejide Kilanko

In Daughters Who Walk this Path, Yejide Kilanko follows the life of Morayo from her childhood into womanhood in contemporary Nigeria. Many of Morayo's female relatives also have significant roles in this story, especially her Aunty Morenike and her younger sister Eniayo, an albino. Their lives are not very different from those of girls and women living in North America, negotiating family relationships, friendships, romance, education, work and motherhood.

The tone of Kilanko's novel is sometimes dark, addressing difficult issues like sexual violence and injustice based on gender, but this is counterbalanced with a lighter tone in other parts, more reminiscent of chick lit. It ends on a hopeful, uplifting note.

Traditional proverbs are at the head of each chapter, and Yoruba words for food and clothing -- egusi soup, a woman's iro (wrapper), a man's agbada (robe) -- add to the sense of place. I was interested to note a reference to carrying things in a Ghana Must Go bag, because I only just learned about this particular type of tote bag this year, when I read Taiye Selasi's book of the same name. (The expression originated in xenophobia, but I don't know it's context in Nigeria today.)

I listened to a Blackstone audiobook [10 h 19 m] narrated by Claudia Alick, whose perfomance is a bit too theatrical for my taste. Alick puts extra emphasis on words that don't need it and her voice often conveys something close to farce which I found at odds with the unadorned style of Kilanko's prose. I got used to it, however, and found myself caught up in Morayo's life.

Kilanko grew up in Nigeria and now lives in Ontario.

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Darling, 10 years old at the start of NoViolet Bulawayo's debut novel We Need New Names, is a unique and unsentimental narrator. I really enjoyed hearing her voice performed by Robin Miles in the audiobook format [Hachette Audio: 9 hrs].

The first part of the book is set in the turbulent times following the independence of Zimbabwe. Darling's family has been displaced and lives in a shantytown called Paradise. She and other children go on guava raids to a richer nearby community, Budapest, in order to assuage their constant hunger.

I'm fond of novels for adults that have child narrators, especially when they are done as well as this one. I can imagine the heat when Darling describes it: "the sun ironed us and ironed us and ironed us." She is asked to hold a baby with a surprised look on its face, as if he had "just seen the buttocks of a snake."

Later, Darling goes to live with her aunt in Detroit. Her ferocity increases in the second half of the book as Darling recounts her teen years. I've never before encountered the words "we smiled" written to contain so much anger. Darling, like other immigrants, struggles to find an identity that fits, and to feel at home. She describes that uncomfortable place of being between two worlds. She is no longer considered Zimbabwean by those she left behind, but she isn't American either. Darling wonders what America is for, if you can't fulfill your dreams there.

We Need New Names is expanded from Bulawayo's short story, 'Hitting Budapest,' that won the Caine Prize for African writing. The episodic style of the novel lends itself well to being read a little at a time, in chapter installments. I was so attracted to Darling's voice, however, that I gulped it down quickly.

Readalike: Ghana Must Go (Taiye Selasi). Contrast We Need New Names with Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (Alexandra Fuller), which gives a Caucasian child's point of view of Zimbabwe.

Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi

Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go is a mesmerizing novel about a Ghanian/Nigerian family in Boston. It's hard to believe that this is Selasi's first novel because it's so polished. It's such a pleasure to read. There's a story about Selasi in the Globe and Mail and I wasn't surprised to learn that she's a high-achiever. Just like her fictional characters.

We meet Kweku Sai first, a brilliant surgeon who abandoned his wife and four children decades earlier in the USA when he returned to live in Ghana. Kweku is in the midst of a heart attack.

"He knows -- as he stands here in wifebeater and MC Hammer pants, shoulder against sliding door, halfway slid open, sliding deeper into reverie, remembrance and re- other things (regret, remorse, resentment, reassessment) -- that's he's dying."

Kweku has never stopped loving them. Fola, his beautiful wife who gave up a law school scholarship to raise their family. Olu, their eldest son, equally talented in academics and athletics. Taiwo and Kehinde, the golden-eyed twins. Sadie, the youngest, born too soon: "her ten tiny fingers all curled up in hope, little fists of determination."

Each member of this family has been broken in their own way, although shame plays a large part in their troubles. Olu, an orthopedic surgeon, doesn't let the rest of his family know that he has married. Taiwo is floundering after losing her (married) lover and being kicked out of college. Kehinde is a famous artist and suicidal. The twins haven't spoken to each other in years. Sadie is bulimic and a closeted lesbian. Fola is sad and lonely once her children are all off on their own.

I especially appreciated the insights Selasi offers into the inner life of her characters. Fola, for example, who was 13 when her father was killed, sensed the "tone people took when they learned that her father had been murdered by soldiers; in the way that they'd nod as if, yes, all makes sense, the beginning of the Nigerian civil war, but of course. [...] She felt it in America when she got to Pennsylvania that her classmates and professors, white or black, it didn't matter, somehow believed that it was natural, however tragic, what had happened. That she'd stopped being Folasade Somayina Savage and had become instead the native of a generic War-Torn Nation. Without specifics."

Selasi's characters are not generic. I felt like I knew them well and was totally invested in them, grateful that Kweku's death presents the opportunity for the rest of them to heal.

(Side note: Kweku Sai is Ga. I learned that Ga coffins are spectacular creations: fish, shoes, birds, coke bottles, airplanes, chili peppers and more. Check out some images online.)

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Barbados author Karen Lord drives Redemption in Indigo with the voice of a storyteller experienced at controlling her audience: "A rival of mine once complained that my stories begin awkwardly and end untidily. I am willing to admit to many faults, but I will not burden my conscience with that one. All my tales are true, drawn from life, and a life story is not a tidy thing."

There is nothing awkward or untidy about Lord's retelling of a Senegalese folktale. It feels both timeless and fresh, neatly packaged in under 200 pages. 

Paama abandoned her husband Ansige after 10 years and moved back in with her family in a village in Africa (or maybe the Caribbean?). Gossips try to get the dirt from her, but Paama will not be drawn in. "The village longed for word on just what was the situation with Paama's marriage, but no-one could break past Paama when she decided to be earnest. She had the talent of speaking many things with little meaning, the gift of red herrings."

The truth is that Ansige is a prodigious glutton who cannot see past his own selfishness. "Ansige unreeled the tale of his tribulations, thoroughly ransacking the truth and then dipping into the bag of embellishment and sprinkling with a free hand." He is the buffoon of the story.

When Paama is given a supernatural stick that controls the powers of chaos, a djombi with indigo skin comes looking for her. This trickster holds humans in contempt, but finds he has things to learn from them.

Readalikes: For a similarly strong storyteller's voice, but without supernatural elements, try No Sweetness Here (Ama Ata Aidoo) or The Long Song (Andrea Levy). The Icarus Girl (Helen Oyeyemi) has some elements of African folklore - a nonhuman being who takes the form of a child - but in a more contemporary setting. The Icarus Girl is also darker and less straight-forward than Redemption in Indigo. For trickster stories from a different part of the world, I recommend the graphic novel collection Trickster: Native American Tales (compiled by Matt Dembicki). Ansige also reminded me of the much scarier glutton in Skeleton Man (Joseph Bruchac).

Note added July 14, 2012: Gav and Simon have a great interview with the author and then discuss the book on their podcast, The Readers.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

Alexandra Fuller was born in England but moved to central Africa with her family in 1972, when she was two. She raised there in poverty, mostly on a tobacco and cattle farm in Zimbabwe during the time of the Rhodesian civil war. Their trips to town were made in a mine-proof Land Rover, her parents holding submachine guns as they drove. Fuller presents her racist, alcoholic and insane mother quite unvarnished in this memoir. It is at turns funny, poignant and horrifying.

I listened to the Recorded Books audiobook which was expertly narrated by Lisette Lecat (10 hours, 15 minutes). Since Fuller is only recording her life into her early 20s, it makes sense that she closes with these lines: "This is not a full circle. It's life carrying on. It's the next breath we take. It's the choice we make to get on with it."

Fuller's latest work, Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness, is said to focus more on her mother. I've no doubt that it's every bit as fascinating as Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight.

For more stories about White girlhoods in Africa, check out my list on the Edmonton Public Library website. Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanji is a novel set in Uganda in 1972, when everyone who wasn't ethnic-African was expelled from that country, even those citizens who had been born in Uganda. Another possible readalike is Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace, a fast-paced novel about bullying and racial tensions based on the author's experiences in an elite boarding school in Zimbabwe in the 1980s.

No Sweetness Here by Ama Ata Aidoo

First published over 40 years ago, this collection of thoughtful and entertaining short stories from Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo does not feel dated at all. Her African women and men are doing ordinary things, like moving to the city to find work, or praying over a sick child. They cook, laugh, and fall in and out of love. They are vividly alive.

Aidoo captures voice especially well. Two of the stories are told entirely in dialogue. I love the expressions her storytellers use to object to interruptions: "I'm cooking the whole meal for you, why do you want to lick the ladle now?" (In the Cutting of a Drink) and "I am taking you to birdtown so I can't understand why you insist on searching for eggs from the suburb!" (Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral).

The path that led to me choosing this book is rather convoluted. I'll thank a commenter on the Amy Reads blog for linking to an NPR interview with Chimamanda Adichie in which she recommends No Sweetness Here. Adichie's warm praise, together with my having enjoyed Aidoo's novel Sister Killjoy some years ago, spurred me to track down the short story collection via interlibrary loan. I'm very glad to have done so.

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

"In the old days in Nigeria, people were kind of scared of twins -- some people still are. Traditionally, twins are supposed to live in three worlds: this one, the spirit world and the Bush, which is a sort of wilderness of the mind." Sarah Harrison explains this to her eight-year-old daughter, Jessamy, after Jess learns that she had a twin sister who died at birth. Jess is a precocious child who has been advanced a year at her school in London and is having great trouble adapting to her new class.

While on a visit to her extended family in Nigeria, Jess makes friends with another girl, Tilly Tilly. When Jess returns home to England, she's delighted to find Tilly Tilly has moved there. It takes a while before Jess realizes that nobody else can see Tilly Tilly, but that doesn't mean she isn't dangerous. Things get pretty spooky!

The Icarus Girl is a challenging book that generated great discussion at my book group last night. There are so many mysterious things, from the choice of title (why refer to a Greek myth? Is Jess the Icarus girl, or is that Tilly Tilly?) to the ambiguous ending. (I thought the final poem made things clear, but not everyone agreed with me.) I'm really looking forward to Oyeyemi's latest book, Mr. Fox.

Readalikes: For another story about twin girls with joint British/Nigerian heritage, try 26a by Diana Evans. Nigerian author Ben Okri's The Famished Road is narrated by a spirit child.

The Olive Tree by Carol Drinkwater

Carol Drinkwater is a British actress who has an olive farm in Provence. She is absolutely passionate on the topic of olives and her enthusiasm is contagious. I think I ate olives or cooked with olive oil every day while I listened to the Clipper audiobook (15 hours), which is read by the author. Check out Drinkwater's website for details about her numerous other books, all with 'olive' in the title.

Subtitled A Personal Journey Through Mediterranean Olive Groves, this book is mostly a travel memoir. Drinkwater travelled on her own through Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Italy, following a proposed UNESCO Olive Heritage Trail. It is also an exploration of the history of olive cultivation and of 21st century agricultural concerns like water shortage, intensive farming, climate change and pesticide use versus organic practices.

Drinkwater has some pet theories about how olives were introduced to the Mediterranean. Her pure conjecture annoyed me, but then she admitted she was kicking around ideas on history to make historians turn in their graves, and I felt better. I also cut her some slack when she landed in Algeria at the same time as the capital had been bombed. A network of beekeepers had arranged to assist her travels through their country by putting her up in their homes, but Drinkwater stubbornly insisted on time to herself in a hotel. She didn't find out until afterwards how dangerous the situation had become for foreigners in Algeria.

Like Drinkwater, I enjoy travelling on my own. I'm heading off to Europe later this week, where I'll have 10 days to myself before joining a friend for a week in Ghent. My iPod is loaded up with audiobooks, ready to go.

On Rereading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

No matter how much I enjoy a book, I rarely read one more than once. Almost the only time I reread is for book clubs. It's been a decade since I read The Poisonwood Bible - too long ago to properly engage in a book discussion on it tomorrow evening. I could only remember that it's about an insane American missionary who moves with his family to the jungle in the Belgian Congo and that the narration alternates between the wife and four daughters. I also remembered that the pace slows down somewhere towards the middle of the book and that I wasn't as keen on the end part as the beginning.

Sometimes skimming is all I need to refresh my memory on a book I've read. Kingsolver is such an engaging writer, however, that I simply could not skim. I was immediately caught up in the story and read all 543 pages. It starts in 1959, at the brink of momentous changes about to take place in the Belgian Congo. After the immediacy of the girls' accounts of their experiences during their first year in the village of Kilanga, a larger view of political and economic upheaval is brought into perspective in the latter part of the book (the part that I had remembered as being rather slow) when the daughters continue to take turns, but their telling skips forward in big chunks of time. I found myself really appreciating Kingsolver's insights into the complicated current history of this part of Africa. 

If you haven't yet read The Poisonwood Bible, it's an epic family saga with memorable characters involved in an astonishingly foolhardy adventure not of their choosing. Highly recommended for rereading, too!