THE TELLER OF SECRETS

A Ghanian Nigerian girl questions the patriarchy against the backdrop of political upheaval during the late 1960s and early '70s.

After her Nigerian mother disappears when she's 4, Esi Agyekum grows up with her father, stepmother, stepsisters, and brother in Ghana. She can’t help but notice the preferential treatment her brother receives, while she has to suppress her burgeoning sexuality. Bearing the weight of her father’s expectations, Esi moves through the childhood rites of passage even as she tries to rebel against societal norms. “Women occupy the kitchen while a man rules from the sitting room,” she observes. Such a fate, she promises herself, will not befall her. The story is packed tight with a brisk catalog of events. Esi constantly shifts from one to another—she sees her father having sex with a woman who is not his wife, she attends elementary school, she attends high school, she visits Nigeria, she falls in and out of love with men—while Adjapon barely gives any of these events time to percolate and matter. For a novel that is packed with so many happenings, the narrative is surprisingly lightweight. It’s a whirlwind tour of a childhood without a compelling (or even believable) voice to guide the reader through the landscape. Esi’s self-centeredness as a young adult seems understandable when so much goes on in her life. Against this character trait, though, her feminist awakening seems incongruous. The Esi we come to know seems impulsive, flighty, and incapable of in-depth analysis. Awkward sex scenes only muddy the waters further. Adjapon also weaves in news of state coups without placing them in context. In the end, the book's execution doesn't live up to its grand narrative ambition.

A muddled coming-of-age story that pays lip service to the ideals of feminism.