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THE GODDESS OF MTWARA AND OTHER STORIES

Name: THE GODDESS OF MTWARA AND OTHER STORIES
Author: Lizzy Attree
ISBN: 978-1-56656-034-4

THE CAINE PRIZE FOR AFRICAN WRITING 2017

edited by Lizzy Attree ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 2017

A wonderful set of 16 stories that covers a lot of ground and features many genres—from myth and folklore to the postmodern...

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Short fiction by some of Africa’s most talented writers.

Since 2000, the annual Caine Prize in African Writing has celebrated some of the most innovative and evocative English-language short fiction by African writers. This collection, which features the five stories shortlisted for this year's prize, as well as 11 stories written during the 2017 Caine Prize Writers’ Workshop, held in Tanzania, continues that tradition. The anthology opens impressively with “Who Will Greet You At Home,” one of two stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah (author of Kirkus Prize finalist What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, 2017), a harrowing and subtly complex tale about a young girl whose obsession with becoming a mother has dire consequences. The often fraught relationship between parent and child is a theme found in several other pieces, including Darla Rudakaubana’s painful “Family Ties” and Lydia Kasese’s surprising “My Mother’s Project,” an exploration of the limits of perspective that unveils what it means to see one’s parents as complicated people. The prize winner, Bushra al-Fadil’s “The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away,” is a vibrant delineation of a summer day in the market and a fateful encounter. Agazit Abate’s “Fidel,” a humorous recounting of the main character’s breakup with her boyfriend and her immense love for Fidel Castro, adds levity to the collection. Love and sexuality are also expertly explored in Arinze Ifeakandu’s achingly beautiful “God’s Children are Little Broken Things” and Daniel Rafiki’s speculative fiction, “Five Is Not Half of Ten,” which will leave readers asking the proverbial, What happened next? Indeed, all the authors render their stories well, building hauntingly familiar or fascinatingly new worlds and exploring them creatively.

A wonderful set of 16 stories that covers a lot of ground and features many genres—from myth and folklore to the postmodern and experimental—in a way that will surely satisfy readers.

Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-56656-034-4

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Interlink

Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.