Writers in exile, remembering home in despair.
An expansive and engaging collection, updated from the original 1994 edition.
Thirty-four voices gathered from an entire continent populate this expanded anthology proving that the art of the story is alive and well in modern Africa. One of the most widely read chroniclers of Africa’s past, Chinua Achebe, provides the adroit foreword but quickly steps out of the way to allow the newer voices to come center stage. Even though certain countries—South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt—dominate the proceedings, the fiction comes from every possible direction. One of the better selections, Ben Okri’s “What the Tapster Saw,” is a brash fever-dream about a man who taps wine from palm trees and has a kaleidoscopic night journey through a landscape peopled with visions, death, and the looming specter of the local oil conglomerate. Like many of the pieces, Okri’s was written in another country; in fact, a depressing number of the authors here seem to have taken writing and teaching positions in Europe and America. They are also predominantly men. One of the few contributions by a woman, Alifa Rifaat’s “At the Time of the Jasmine” (born in Egypt in 1930, Rifaat published most of her work only after her husband died in 1974), is a simple but emotional look into the soul of a conflicted man taking the train to his family’s village for his father’s funeral. Not surprisingly, there’s little presence of joy in these pages—and little humor. As Nadezda Obradovic says in his introduction, “This anthology is not a happy recital any more than Africa today is a happy continent.” Still, there are voices of beauty and snatches of wonder amid the folly and despair. Moroccan Mohammed Berrata’s “A Life in Details” sails out on this sadly noted example: “We return home to write down this life that we are living by well-rationed portions.”
Writers in exile, remembering home in despair.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-72240-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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