An ambitious novel of forbidden romance in colonial Ghana that blends the personal and political to mixed effect.
A teenage boy falls in love and battles with his father in the years leading up to Ghana’s independence.
In this debut novel, Wright tells the story of Ani Baknu, son of a privileged Ghanaian couple. The book opens in 1948, when the country is still under British rule, but Ani and his friends have to contend with the political violence in Accra. Ani’s more immediate problem is his overbearing father, Kofi, who wants to control his career path, love life, and loyalties. Ani, determined to chart his own course, begins dating Deka Delmojus, the daughter of his father’s longtime antagonist. Ani and Deka’s relationship deepens (He tells her: “After my mother, you’re the only one I trust to give me support. You’re the only one I trust to give me comfort. You’re the only one I trust to give me true love”). Kofi tries to split up the couple, and the girl finds herself the target of increasingly violent attacks. Ani, working with the police and learning to take responsibility for himself (“My dad shouldn’t be the game changer in my own game”), investigates the assaults and moves toward building a future with Deka. He ultimately celebrates his own independence along with that of Ghana. Wright’s Ani, a multilayered character, draws out the reader’s sympathies, despite his Hamlet-like tendency to complain instead of act and his frequent misreading of Deka’s behavior. Unfortunately, the book’s other characters are not as fully realized. Both the narrative (“An outright refusal would engender violence, but acceptance would go against his sense of honesty and integrity”; “On setting his eyes on his father, he beheld a wild streak etched on his face, and his eyes were darkened like the mud waters after the rains”) and the dialogue (“I’ve grappled with my father’s pugnacious attitude. Unfortunately, I’ve failed to uncover reasons for his behavior”; “Your foreboding look smothered my anger. I have too much regard for you, Deka”) are frequently awkward and stilted. While Wright expertly juxtaposes a human coming-of-age tale with a country’s, the unpolished writing style and insufficiently developed supporting characters and motivations keep the story from being an entirely enjoyable read.
An ambitious novel of forbidden romance in colonial Ghana that blends the personal and political to mixed effect.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-940354-39-2
Page Count: 194
Publisher: New Friends Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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