An intimate and resonant take on finding one’s place in the world even while being pulled in opposing directions.
What does it mean to come of age, and how does that change depending on where you live? In his debut novel, Donkor explores the tensions of growing up between two cultures as three young women face the challenges of adolescence in Ghana and among the Ghanaian diaspora in London.
Just after the millennium, 17-year-old Belinda and 11-year-old Mary are live-in maids for a wealthy elderly couple—whom they call Aunty and Uncle—who made their money in the U.K. and retired to their native Ghana. When Ghanaian friends still living in London come to visit, it’s decided that they’ll bring Belinda back with them to London to act as a good influence on their moody, rebellious, and thoroughly Westernized teenage daughter, Amma. (Donkor’s parents are Ghanaian; he was born in London.) Donkor’s deft shifts between spheres and scenes—house parties populated by posh British teens; the rural village where Belinda grew up and where she and her mother are mysteriously ostracized; the opulent home where Belinda and Mary work—are confident and illuminating, revealing the complexity and nuance of modern life, particularly for immigrants. Dialogue, both external and internal, is often a delight—Mary and Belinda’s speech is peppered with pop-culture references and Twi idioms. (There’s a helpful glossary at the beginning of the book, though some phrases go untranslated.) As Belinda teases Mary on the phone, shortly after she arrives in London: “And what do you know of planes? Oh, I forgot, you are in aeroplanes all of the time, isn’t it? Like a smaller Naomi Campbell.” The narrative stays closest to Belinda’s perspective, as it is she who travels from Ghana to England and back again. Throughout the novel, growing up is characterized as a series of losses, as Belinda, Amma, and Mary face death, limited opportunity, and unrequited first love. While the conclusion veers toward didacticism, Belinda learns that there’s power in living through loss, too.
An intimate and resonant take on finding one’s place in the world even while being pulled in opposing directions.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30517-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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